chan / April 22, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

buddha shakyamuni descending from the mountains, hatakeyama memorial museum of fine art, tokyo

2:03 PM: chan (zen) buddhism originated in china in the seventh century. when it spread to japan, the japanese understood and pronounced chan as zen. i bring it up today, as it occurred to me that what i am doing, or to be precise, not doing as these watercolors progress, is a kind of moving meditation. as my mind says “oh, philip, you need to define this rock just a little bit more,” increasingly i say “thank you for sharing,” or simply,”fuck off!”

as in the zen meditation practice, i move through stages towards enlightenment. will i ever attain it? not really the point. this morning during my daily meditation at the house, before coming to the studio, i received the answer to my 48 hour old question: where did i put the s/s coffee grinder basket? i had been searching everywhere for it with no success. as soon as i closed my eyes, not only did i recall where i had put it, i saw it. this is just a small example of how knowing can emerge, given the opportunity.

enlightenment could be seen as the ultimate knowing.

on the LEFT, a hanging scroll in ink on paper by zhongfeng mingben. it is one of the very few surviving 14th century zen paintings preserved in japan.

“the sketchy and scratchy zen paintings exude the chan spirit: less use of language, more subtle suggestion, leading to higher understanding.”

james c.y. watt in his introduction to: the world of khubilai khan, chinese art in the yuan dynasty, published in conjunction with the exhibition at the metropolitan museum of art, nyc, in 2011.

starting watercolor 26 / from the acropolis to the creek / April 21, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

7:34 PM looking through past paintings, i found this interesting comparison; rocks on the acropolis, which i painted about 15 years ago, and the rocks at cottonwood creek here in crestone/baca, which i painted this morning.

3:05 PM: today i completed watercolor 26. my grand daughter in athens, greece had sent me a beautiful drawing this morning, which i posted BELOW, and i suggested to her that she google matisse and check out his drawings. somehow, although i’ve been studying him a lot lately, just mentioning him to her translated to the kinds of marks i made, especially in stage 1, which you see BELOW. i think the watercolors i’ve done over the past week have been leading up to this moment; lets see where it leads tomorrow.

12:01 PM: getting kind of a late start; i was going back and forth with my grand daughter in athens. she sent a photo of a beautiful drawing she just made.

here’s me with most of the watercolors in the series i’ve been working on.

and BELOW, the drawing my grand daughter justy sent me

slight modification to watercolor 24 / starting & completing watercolor 25 / April 20, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

6:53 PM: we just returned from our first live visit with friends here in the baca grande. it was kind of a shock for us all to be actually sitting (at the recomended distance) outdooors on their deck having a real live conversation! and it was wonderful.

this was the first opportunity i’ve had since social distancing came into play, to make a drawing of a real person, excluding myself, who, of course is not a real person. it was so refreshing; moreso than we had expected. we’re planning a repeat in a week or so.

3:09 PM: here’s watercolor 25 on the left, and motion 39, 36x36” in oil on linen painted in 2016-17, which i was glancing at as i worked; interesting development, no? am i going backwards or forwards, or do those terms not apply at all?

12:47 PM: the final blue wavy marks i added at the end of the day yesterday were way too dark, and were overpowering the rest of the composition. so today i modified them, and as a result i think the composition as a whole now works. so i’m launching into watercolor 25.

BELOW: yesterdays version is on the left

STAY TUNED for updates on watercolor 25!

preparing to start work on watercolor 24 / April 19, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

*watercolor 24* at the end of my painting day today

2:44 PM: so i ended up not using the photo i posted earlier, but i’ll likely use it in the future.

my intention today was to keep it light and not get as deep into the weeds as i did yesterday with watercolor 23. i think i did accomplish that, but as usual i was a bit torn after the first round of painting, when the watercolor was simpler than this final version. that version is BELOW left.

what i like about the final version is it’s boldness. bravura i might even say. stage 1 was somewhat safe and tentative, whereas this one has something going on with the marks, especially the rocks in the background, that is more reminiscent of my looser more abstracted work, especially my motion series oils.

10:55 AM: the days have settled into a pattern of cloudy mornings with the sun emerging around 10:30. i switched up my process today, sitting at my desktop and selecting candidates from pour trail walk 2 days ago, instead of having my coffee & toast at a different table, where i generally read & study artists i’m interested in.

as a result, i have 4 images i just printed out, one more stunning than the next. artists generally are not in the habit of being this transparent; one gallery sales person actually tried to dissuade me form sharing photos like the one i’m posting here, arguing that it ruins the mystique us artists have with some of the public. and to that i respond: BS! the more people can learn about the artistic process, the better.

so lets see, as the day progresses, how watercolor 24, as yet just a dream in my head, takes form.

looking back / faucet trauma / watercolor 23 / April 18, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

7:02 PM: looking back over my work, recent and not so recent, i can see a consistancy of feeling, composition, color and marks. here are a few:

3:47 PM: this morning, after struggling with it last night and then having a nightmare about it, i successfully installed this faucet water purifier in our master bath. although our well water has been evaluated as excellent, we need to filter out the minerals for use with the sinupulse, a device that i’ve been using for over a decade and which promotes sinus health. having had 2 sinus surgeries, this solution was recommended to me by my surgeon, and has been instrumental in maintaining healthy sinuses.

it was supposed to be very easy to install, but of course was not. it was a bitch, which had to do with determining which were the correct washers for our faucet and then correctly placing them. so i’m very proud of myself that i solved it this morning!

after that, painting watercolors was a very welcome relief. watercolor 23 is inspired by one of about 60 photos i shot yesterday on our trail walk. it’s rather dense, but i think it works. what caught my attention during our walk was this orange-red rock with the dark lichen.

going a little stir crazy & starting watercolor 22 / April 17, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

1:31 PM: taking it slow on this one, i’m at stage 2. mikela will walk over from the house in about half an hour so we can go to town & pick up some food orders before heading up to the trail, so i may stop now, or at least soon, and resume tomorrow morning.

you can see the changes i just made by comparing with the image BELOW, which i posted about an hour ago.

12:44 PM: hi there. today is the first day i’m (we’re) feeling the effects of isolating. even though we have each other, we’re starting to miss social interaction. so we’re going to try & set up outdoor dinners with friends once or twice a week, and maybe take little drives to places like the great sand dunes national monument, to break up the sameness.

i’m declaring watercolor 21 complete, and started watercolor 22 about an hour ago. it still feels fresh and fun, so i guess i’ll continue the series until my shoulder feels healed. i have seemingly endless sources of inspiration and imagery, and we’ll be resuming our creek walks this afternoon, so i’ll probably gather more material.

watercolor 21: unexpectedly continuing this one! / / April 16, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

3:35 PM: i was fully intending to start watercolor 22 when i looked again at yesterdays 21 and i just didn’t feel complete. the white spaces, which i normally love, were bugging me. so i picked up where i left off, fully aware that i might well regret it. so far, i don’t. is there a lot going on compared with where i left it yesterday? most certainly! is that detracting in any way from the painting as a whole? i think not! not only that, but i may even do a bit more tomorrow!

BELOW: yesterdays version next to todays:

8:05 AM: here’s a detail of yesterdays watercolor 21 as it looked this morning in our house. in a few hours, i’ll be in my studio and begin work on watercolor 22. what will it look like? and will there be a 23,24,25, etc? or will i move on to a new series? watercolor; oil; gouache….what will the medium be?

it’s likely i’ll be venturing out to paint plein air in a few weeks, despite the face that snow is predicted for tonight. what will that new work look like, and how will it influence the work i’ll be doing in my studio? more later.

starting watercolor 21 / photos from yesterdays trail walk / / April 15, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

3:50 PM: i completed watercolor 21 about an hour ago. i like the way the space is broken up, and this one has definitely not been pushed too far.

a language has been emerging over the period of time i’ve been making these watercolors. it’s a result of our frequent walks and our almost daily observation of the creek and all the rocks and branches we encounter along the trail. when the time comes, likely within a few weeks, to go back out and paint plein air, i’m anxious to see what effect all this has had and how it shows up when i’m sitting out there on my 3 legged stool with my little portable table.

BELOW: on the left, at work on the watercolor; right: an early stage

8:06 AM: another magical walk yesterday; i shot some photos that may be useful for future paintings & surveyed the territory for potential future plein air painting locations. i think it will be safe to go out on some of those trips with my mentee k., if his dad is willing to drive him & pick him up. i’ll post stages of the new watercolor later today, once i get to work.

here are a few of yesterdays shots

starting watercolor 20 / watercolor 19 in the house: it works! / / April 14, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

3:20 PM: stages of watercolor 20 and how making brownies became part of the process:

*watercolor 20* at the end of my painting day

BELOW: the 6 stages of watercolor 20

i spent most of the day working on the new watercolor 20. but when i hit a patch where i couldn’t feel where to go next, i decided to make some brownies, which turned out to be the perfect transitional activity. it took my mind off the question of where to go next and allowed me to cast those all important glances at the new watercolor to get some clues about what if anything needed to happen next.

8:06 am: i’ll be going to my studio in a couple of hours and post when i start the new watercolor 20. in the mean time, here is watercolor 19 in our entryway with the morning sun. it’s much more interesting somehow seeing it in the house, which happens a lot. i now consider it resolved.

when i have my studio breakfast, i’ll be reading more about vuillard in the handsome large hard cover 2004 catalogue from his traveling retrospective. i’m feeling more and more kinship with his aesthetic and his approach to mark making, illustrated in the two paintings BELOW: (details on the right)

observations of watercolor 18 / starting watercolor 19 / last saturdays trail walk photo /11/11/17 lookback / April 13, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

4:26 PM: here’s a look back to november 11, 2017, when i was making this gouache on paper of a woman typing on a recent plane flight we had taken. plane flights now seem like ancient history!

3:23 PM: once again, it’s going to take 24 hours to properly evaluate what happened today with watercolor 19. it has some brilliant passages, if i do say so myself, but i’m not yet sure it hangs together as a composition.my goal was for this one to have a lighter touch, like some of the earlier ones. freshness and playfulness without sacrificing depth and complexity. my favorites so far in this series have pregnant areas of negative space with totally work in the composition, acting like an in-breath, allowing you the viewer to take that all important exhale, while at the same time filling in the “blanks” yourself.

BELOW: the stages thus far

12:33 PM: i wasn’t sure yesterday about watercolor 18, but after evaluating it over at the house, i decided i like it, and it’s now up with the rest on my studio east wall. our trail walk this past saturday was magical, as usual. i didn’t shoot any photos of the creek, rather turning my attention to details we might have missed had it not been for the covid 19 situation, which is giving us more relaxed time to observe everything.

as a result, i stopped and photographed this tree bark with the shadows it cast. it says a lot about the aesthetic currently in my consciousness. nature makes no mistakes, and offers an abundance of lessons if we can receive them.

in keeping with what has become a daily practice, i made a rapid self portrait sketch this morning, which i fine comical. but hey, i’m a comical guy!