thunderstorms / watercolors 80-81 /  by Philip Tarlow

3:51PM: for the past hour we’ve been having an intense thunder/hail storm. a flash flood warning is in effect for crestone/baca.

watercolor 81, stage 1

before it got too dark to paint, i was able to complete stage 1 of the larger 13 x 20” watercolor 81. i’ll resume tomorrow morning after our early morning trail walk.

2:58 PM: thunderstorms are moving in from the north. rain started at 2:58. the rest of the valley is sunny and clear. these storms are impossible to predict in our valley, as are the amounts of rain. there is a flash flood warning at the moment.

1:33 PM: the monsoonal flow has kicked in, resulting in a series of afternoon thunderstorms. this may last for another week or so, then taper off and resume later in the summer. it’s dramatic, with skies darkening around 3 and storms moving in roughly between 3-6 or later. yesterday they continued until almost 10pm. this afternoon they are expected to start a bit later; about 6:30. here’s what our skies looked like yesterday afternoon at 5:50.

watercolor 80 10 x 13”

this is watercolor 80. the curvy white spaces are what is created in the creek when there’s still ice, and it’s beginning to grow smaller due to temperatures starting to rise above freezing in early spring. a dance of shapes results, broken by the brances and remaining leaves from the previous fall. if you set out to create am abstract composition along these lines, you could never match the harmony created by the natural world.

watercolor 79 /  by Philip Tarlow

leaning against a large crestone conglomerate rock on our morning trail walk

12:56 PM: at 7:10 am we set out for the creek. the temperature was a perfect 54F and it was partly cloudy, with skies clearing by 8. the creek was fuller and noisier than it has been due to yesterdays afternoon thunderstorms. and for the same reason, the fragrances were heady. hard to believe that so much chaos and violence is occurring in our land. the protests are ongoing, as they should be.

but as we ascended the rocky trail, it all faded and we were left with a heavenly silence, broken only by the bird people and the creek water. a pattern of afternoon thunderstorms, typical for this time of year, when the monsoonal flow kicks in, has allowed our temperatures to suddenly drop from the upper 70’s to the mid 50’s starting around 3-6pm almost every afternoon.

while brewing my morning coffee and making toast, i glanced at the wall adjacent to my kitchen and next to my north facing studio door. on it are a collection of photos, drawings, paintings and an old poster from the benaki museum in athens, at a time when

my late friend angelos delivorrias was director of the museum. some of what you see, starting at the top and going clockwise are: a drawing for a portrait of my grandson philip as a child, which never materialized; a photo i shot in 1980 of david hockney on his deck kissing his dog; my dad at his bar mitzvoh with a gouache study of mikela and her coffee thermos next to it on the left; the marquee of a movie theatre in houston in 1998, advertising our talk about mikela’s just published book, navigating the future; a 1st c. fayum portrait found in the metropolitan museum, nyc next to a small oil study of some rocks; the edge of an old ‘70’s benaki museum poster; pieces of palette with dried paint from a 2006 oil painting, and a page from a byzantine manuscript given to me in the ‘70’s by an old friend. i don’t think i’ve ever shared this with you guys.


so, under the influence of our walk, i made watercolor 79 a few moments ago. like some of the earlier ones in this series, it has a very light touch, with tender tonal transitions and evocative marks indicating light and shadow, water and rock. it could stand as a summary of all 78 watercolors preceding it. it’s more along the lines of a plein air painting than a studio painting, but for various reasons, i could never have done this outdoors. close, maybe, but with less of a contemplative air about it.

highlight & paste this url to view the other 78 watercolors: https://www.philiptarlow.com/new-page-4

OR, simply click on the dropdown menu :2020 watercolors, at the top of this page.

WATERCOLORS 77 AND 78 /  by Philip Tarlow

watercolor 77 10x13”

DETAIL of watercolor 77

3:25 PM: i’m in a bit of a rush to get back to the house, where we’re each going to make an hour of calls in support of candidates running in the upcoming local primary elections.

watercolor 78 10x13”

i made two new watercolors today, while also making a tray of brownies! they are both based on photos i shot during a recent trail walk. there was a pool of water created by the rushing current, which was in a quiter spot but has the swirling bubbly surface only possible with such a swift and dynamic current.

77 is a bit much, so i tried making a second one which is more restrained, or at least softer. i’ll have to look at them some more and know better tomorrow how they hold up to the others in the series.

watercolor 76 / paintngs in the house /  by Philip Tarlow

SITE-5-29-20 paintings at home 1.jpg

7:49 PM: this is where new watercolors i bring from the studio to the house await observation and evaluation. this latest one got a very positive response from us both.

after dinner and dish washing i stopped in front of landscscape with pink trees and shot these two details. this painting is part of my sound of a flute series, 78 x 26” oil on linen.

SITE-Taiga-peaks among spring clouds.jpg

1:59 PM: i didn’t overwork it, but did i do enough? well, when i cast that all important glance, it seems so.

on the right is an 18th c. painting by ike taiga. is it enough? an unfair comparison perhaps, but my point has to do with the evocation rather than the description of a landscape.

watercolor 76 13 x 20”

increasingly, my eye is happier when it has only to deal with 2 or 3 forms; 2 or 3 colors that evoke rather than rather than spell out the landscape.

this one has no white dots in gouache, as do many of the previous ones, indicating bubbly creek water. it is, you might say, playfully austere.

i think it helped that, due to rising daytime temperatures, we’ve switched our trail walks to 6:30 am instead of late afternoon. it was delightfully cool this morning, and much easier to observe and enjoy the landscape. the bird people were singing in tongues. i think that was a factor in the creation of watercolor 76. it works equally well flipped 180.

watercolor 75 /  by Philip Tarlow

FINALLY! A THUNDERSTORM!!! we’ve been waiting and waiting for some smidgin of rain, and this afternoon we had a thunderstorm, albeit brief.

can’t we get some more? please?

watercolor 75 10x13”

1:09 PM: we have a zoom call soon, so i’m stopping early. i painted watercolor 75, which is in the smaller format: 10x13.”

yesterday as we walked, it struck me just how pervasive the splashing water is, now that the snowmelt is nearing its end. it’s giving one more good dousing to rocks, branches and beaver dams before calming down to a gentle summer flow.

so, after completing all the marks and strokes, i passed my fan brush over it all, giving the impression of water wildly splashing.

BELOW: 3 details

watercolor 74 and grindlepiks /  by Philip Tarlow

6:20 PM: so now that i’ve showered and had my beer & dinner, what i notice when i glance at watercolor 47 are the grindlepiks. i just now made up that word, and what it refers to are the marks, like the orange/siena one center-left. you can’t plan or make them happen; they happen. if you try or plan, you get crap. crap!

grindlepiks are spontaneous signature marks that strongly remind us of animal/plant forms. but they’re not. but they are. what if there were an entire watercolor filled with grindlepiks? would that kind of look like a contemporary gorky? or is it best to allow them to be born within the context of one of these abstracted creek-scapes? probably the latter. because, see, i don’t really care about making abstract paintings! i care about reflecting my love for the creek by focusing my many decades of mark making on the grackflim of the snowmelt rushing over the grey and orange rocks. so why the invented words. ordinary, known words carry known meanings. they trigger memories of sometimes irrelevant meanings. they connote events, places that may be unimportant, even conflicting. grackflim, a made up word, is splash in the middle of your online experience of watercolor 47.

  • 4:28 PM: here’s what happens when we don’t take our afternoon trail walk; i just keep going and going and…i got rid of that damned rock altogether! i think it improved the composition vastly. there are some areas of the watercolor that were being overshadowed by that rock, which i didn’t really like from the very start. i’m looking at it right now here in the entryway to our house, where new watercolors usually get to be seen by us both. mikela reacted positively, but of course she doesn’t know the history.

  • on other fronts, we have a rabbit coming to visit every morning and afternoon, so mikela put out some carrots & greens for him/her a few minutes ago. i just glanced out there and they’re already gone!

3:47 PM: i made a few adjustments to that rock on the upper right.

watercolor 74 13 x 20”

2:36 PM: i worked on watercolor 74 most of the day.

i can’t yet decide whether or not the rock on the upper right has too much information. i’ll keep glancing, which is really the best way for me to determine that, other than bringing it over to the house & looking at it in a different environment.

11:45 am: the east facing wall of my studio, above, contains a selection of my 2020 watercolors series. as artist shara hughs said, “who doesn’t like the landscape?” my watercolor landscapes; in this case creek-scapes, are inspired by years of plein air paintings both in oil and gouache, at one of our local creeks.

BELOW are two examples: on the left, a 2018 plein air gouache on paper, 9x12” and on the right, a 2012 plein air painting in oil on linen, 16x16”

each shows an emotionally charged, painterly stylization of forms that transcends the portrayal of a literal landscape, while allowing the viewer to be aware that these are interpretations of a specific landscape. the same can be said of this watercolor series. shortly, i’ll embark on the 74th in the series. increasingly, i’m feeling the desire to go back out into the landscape and make more plein air paintings. the question is: will my tendonitis afflicted right shoulder allow that to happen?

in the mean time, stay tuned for todays watercolor update.

WATERCOLORS 72 AND 73 /  by Philip Tarlow

watercolor 72

2:43 PM: watercolors 72 and 73, both 10x13” are busy and spare, respectively.

watercolor 73

the first, on the right, took most of the day. the second, BELOW, took under an hour.

i’ll say more about them when we’re back from our trail walk this afternoon.

watercolors 70 and 71 /  by Philip Tarlow

watercolor 71 as it looked moments ago

2:56 PM: so, as i anticipated just 45minutes ago (BELOW) watercolor 71 did indeed change. i added a few darker blues and a branch, which balance the movement of the orange and green sweeping marks on the upper right.

watercolor 70 10x13”

watercolor 71 13x20:

2:16 PM: watercolor 70 and watercolor 71 continue the movement away from literal rendering of the creek-scape towards a painterly, abstracted, patterned stylization.

both, but especially watercolor 71, may change later today or tomorrow morning.

watercolor 69 / watercolors in a new setting /  by Philip Tarlow

2:37PM: yesterday we had our jour fixe with our german friends, which was, as always a delight. i brought some of the watercolors for them to see, and we lined them up against the wall in their beautiful courtyard.

watercolor 69 10x13”

they looked great, and quite different than in my studio or in the house. it gave us more of a sense of how they will look in my august exhibition in carbondale. images are BELOW

today i made a new one: watercolor 69. it’s the smaller of the two sizes i’ve been using: 10x13”

it’s far less busy than the two i made yesterday, and has an interesting balance of pinks, oranges greens and blues. if it were a love letter, it would be a tender one, with boiling passion just beneath the surface.

watercolors 67 and 68, 10x13" /  by Philip Tarlow

2:33 PM: we had a great walk up the trail yesterday. i shot 6 photos, some of which will inspire new watercolors. these are the first two: watercolor 67, BELOW LEFT and watercolor 68.

newly sprouted leaves are part of the composition, casting shadows on the rocks below. tomorrow i may simplify this same composition, allowing more white space to dominate .