June 5, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

6:30 PM: today in the studio was devoted to logistics. i didn’t have the energy to paint; i was mentally preparing for a zoom i had at 3 regarding my august show in carbondale & i knew immediately afterwards we had our jour fixé with dear friends, always a delight. i made brownies, we brought non- dairy chocolate fudge ice cream and they added raspberries to the mix, which looked like this.

this morning we took our trail walk. as we descended, we walked past a rock i had noticed on several previous walks which, at this hour of the morning, had some striking leaf shadows on it. i took a few steps back and said: today is the day i’l photograph these beautiful shadows, which i proceeded to do.

i told the story to our friends just now as we were eating and drinking together. i showed them this photo, which i hadn’t really looked at. nothing unusual. and just now, as i posted it here, i saw 2 rocks, one of which, in the background, had the leaf shadows i was so excited about. the one in the foreground however….what are those black leaf shaped marks? they look too dark to be shadows. what else could they possibly be? i don’t get it! i’ll have to study them more carefully. the ones on the rock in the background have the distinct look of shadows. but the one in the foreground? it’s a mystery. they are simply too dark for shadows, and the texture of the rock doesn’t show through, as it does in the background rock. now those look like shadows should, right? my painters eye is confused, and i can’t wait to get back to that spot on our sunday walk. until then, it will remain a mystery.

BELOW: on the left, the rock i saw & thought i was photographing. and on the right the mysteriou rock with the impossibly dark shadows. the lighting conditions are exactly the same.

watercolor 83, more work on watercolor 82 / new brushes, watercolors / June 4, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

watercolor 83 at 3pm — *watercolor 83* at 3pm

3:15 PM: toady, after the work i did this morning on watercolor 82, i started watercolor 83. it’s more along the lines of some earlier ones, such as watercolor 45. i have some questions regarding the distribution of white spaces, but am too tired to deal with it right now. in half an hour, we’re each making an hour and a quarter of calls supporting candidates for our local elections, so i have to get moving.

10:52 AM: our new early morning trail walk time has resulted in us getting up about 4:30 am every day now. so i get to work earlier and conk out earlier as well.

yesterday i received some new materials i had ordered from blick: 2 watercolor brushes and 3 half pans of watercolors. i had ordered 11 plus tubes of white gouache colors, but the rest are on back order, so i’ll have to wait on those.

watercolor 82 13 x 20”, at 10:30am today — *watercolor 82* 13 x 20”, at 10:30am today

no sooner had i opened them than i tested them out, continuing work on watercolor 82. after bringing it over to the house yesterday, i realized it needed more work. the way i had divided the composition into 9 square-ish boxes was far too obvious and resulted in a fragmented look. looking at it just now, i think it still needs more work to create smooth transitions. not too smooth, as that would defeat the purpose of joining 9 diverse images into one harmonious painting. it seems much further along in that direction, but i think i’ll do a bit more, while starting watercolor 83, for which i made a preliminary drawing yesterday afternoon.

watercolor 82 / June 3, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

watercolor 82 13 x 20” — *watercolor 82* 13 x 20”

1:30 PM: on our morning trail walk, i was getting signals for a new direction. it involves dividing the composition into a number of square/rectangular boxes. each contains elements from one of the images i’ve been using for the watercolor series. each box, for convenience sake, bears a number corresponding to the number i wrote on the individual creek image it’s based upon. once i begin filling in the individual boxes, cross pollination begins taking place, so that elements from one box may overlap or bleed into an adjacent one. it’s a work in progress, but this is the first iteration.

the viewers eye then makes his/her own sense of the entire image. although it derives from, in this case 9 discreet images, an endless number of connections can be made, creating a kind of moveable composition determined by form, line and color. a rock morph into a bird; a branch into a worm…

yesterday afternoon, i noticed the first cactus blossom of the season. our little cacti bloom every june, and the blossoms last only a few days or maybe a week. this one showed up just outside the entryway to our house. there were 3 of them, each with a bee in it’s center, enjoying the nectar.

watercolor 80-81, next steps / June 2, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

watercolor 81 at 1pm — *watercolor 81* at 1pm

watercolor 80 at 1pm — *watercolor 80* at 1pm

1:26 PM: i worked on both watercolors today, going from one to the other. the green happened last minute.

watercolor 80 at 10am today — *watercolor 80* at 10am today

10:13 am: we were up at 4:30, prepared to leave for our trail walk at 6:30. it rained, and we postponed till tomorrow. yesterday by the way we set a new record for the date of .4 inches of rain. the snowpack up on the peaks, on the other hand, is at a record low, with a record low snowfall for the month of april, which is usually a heavy snow month. records are falling everywhere!

after gazing at watercolor 80 last night and this morning, we both felt it needed more work. so i went all or nothing on it but cannot yet determine whether the result is all or nothing!

so now i’m going to continue work on watercolor 81 and see what happens.

thunderstorms / watercolors 80-81 / June 1, 2020 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 — *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” — *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 / May 31, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

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

SITE-5-31-20 studio wall with photos & art.jpg

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 / May 30, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

watercolor 77 10x13” — *watercolor 77* 10x13”

DETAIL of watercolor 77 — 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” — *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 / May 29, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

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” — *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 / May 28, 2020 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” — *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 / May 27, 2020 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!

SITE-5-27-20 watercolor 47-CROP-grindlepik.jpg

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” — *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.