watercolor 91 destroyed and reborn / my paintings with dan's ceramics in aspen /  by Philip Tarlow

3:46 PM: a few of my motion paintings are currently hanging in the aspen home of our friend dan, surrounded by his beautiful ceramic pieces. they will be included in my august carbondale exhibition, and i’ll be speaking with the director of carbondale arts about including some of dan’s ceramics in the show, hanging them around the paintings as they are in aspen.

watercolor 91 13x20” 6/15/20

6-15-20: this morning i attempted unsuccessfully to make a few additions to watercolor 91. never a good idea to mess with a completed watercolor. it became worse and worse, new marks on top of old, until the whole thing slid into oblivion. it happens. especially with the delicate watercolor medium. so i tore it up, turned the pieces over and am now using them to test colors on future works.

we had a facetime regarding our educational platform at noon. i started a new one, also called watercolor 91, just before leaving for the house, and completed it just after getting back, a few minutes ago. i love how spare it is, and the blues and greens, how they work together. one way of determinig the sucess of a small, 13x20” painting such as this is to ask the question: could it scale 2, 3, maybe 4 times larger?

tomorrow i’m having a new crown seated on an implant abutment in salida. i’ve been waiting for over a year for this crown, which will finally enable me to chew on the right side. so i’m excited!

watercolor 91 /  by Philip Tarlow

6:56 PM: another great jour fixe, and we’re back home. andhere’s a look back form our april 22nd trail walk. not even two months ago, but it feels more like 2 years.

it reveals, more than any words, what it is that excites and inspires me about our walks. this radical beauty, these endlessly varied patterns, the light and shadows, the subtlety of greys, sienas…if you look critically at any of the 91 watercolors in this series, you will find them.

watercolor 91 at 3:04 pm

3:04 PM: watercolor 91 just now, following some additions on the lower right.

watercolor 91 at 2:30pm

2:31 PM: watercolor 91 is evolving slowly, and currently looks like this. i have about an hour before we need to prepare for our jour fixe meeting, so i may do a few more things right now.

1:02 PM: we didn’t take our trail walk this morning, so i arrived early at the studio and was able to get to work on watercolor 91.

at work on watercolor 91 moments ago

this one is inspired by a photo i shot on our trail walk yesterday morning, when the light was especially sharp and clear.

continuing work; will post updates when available.

trail walk / oatmeal cookies / my new powerbook /  by Philip Tarlow

transferring from air to powerbook

1:50 PM: we have our jour fixe porch meeting this afternoon at the home of our dear friends, but i’m afraid it may get rained out. thunderstorms are predicted, starting around 3pm. we’ll see.

our morning trail walk was a delight. the early morning light transformed the landscape, with its freshly emerged greens.

i spent more time than anticipated loading the updated adobe photoshop & bridge onto my new powerbook, which arrived yesterday, and making oatmeal cookies for our afternoon get together, so i may not embark on the next watercolor and wait until the morning.

the powerbook, while it has a 13” screen just like the old macbook air, looks a lot smaller since they cut down on the unnecessary metal framing the screen itself. it’s a pound heavier than the air, has a larger track pad, a keyboard that’s more user friendly and, most importantly for me, extremely accurate and crisp colors.

mr. rabbit / watercolor 89 and 90, gestalt /  by Philip Tarlow

watercolor 90 13 x 20”

3:41 PM: this is watercolor 90, in the same mood as 89, but larger (13 x 20”) & a tad more crowded as a composition.

i’m seeing that it’s key, when i start one of these, to make a few bold moves, as you see in the upper quadrant of watercolor 89, BELOW. otherwise i end up fenagling around like a cook searching for his favorite knife. those early bold chi filled marks are the anchor around which the rest of the composition can build. so, in 89, one of the very last moves was that green shape on the lower right, which could not have come about without those bold, early orange and blue marks on top. but still, 90 does have it’s own identity, and will look great on it’s new owners wall. it’s gestalt is compelling enough to prevent getting stuck on details. here’s a definition of gestalt":

Gestalt refers to the form or shape of something and suggests that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

watercolor 89 10x13”

taiga tree, 18th c. japan

1:32 PM: watercolor 89, 10x13” popped out his morning. i still have juice, so i may start a larger one, 13x20” this reflects my mood right now: dangerously squiggly and in love with blues and oranges. the creek, while it remains my inspiration, is becoming a pretext for voluptuous marks, in part honoring the great taiga and his wife, gyokuran. they were totally into sexy marks long before they were fashionable and acceptable.

our bunny a few days ago

7:59 am: yesterday evening just before sunset, i saw our local rabbit under our suv. he/she was up on it’s hind legs purposefully doing something that looked a lot eating. but his head was blocked, so i couldn’t be sure. what was so appealing under there?

he/she is a survivor of Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease, which is probably why we’re seeing so few of them this spring. here’s what the article said on april 20: Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Confirmed in Southern Colorado, Broomfield, Colo. – A highly contagious and fatal disease of rabbits and hares has been detected for the first time in Colorado. Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) and the Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA) report that Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Virus type 2 (RHDV-2) was confirmed late last week in three wild cottontail rabbits approximately 10 miles southeast of Alamosa in Costilla County, CO. RHDV-2 does NOT affect humans or domestic species other than rabbits, but is highly contagious and lethal among rabbits.

so i should get to my studio by 10 or so and get started on watercolor 89. i’m also planning on doing more work preparing for my august show in carbondale. i’d like if possible, to make a selection of the oils i might include, in addition to the watercolors, as well as making a final decision on how the watercolors will be framed. more later….

updating adobe with rajeev in new delhi / watercolor 88 /  by Philip Tarlow

12:44 PM: just off the phone with rajeev, an adobe employee who was giving me support from his location in new delhi. it’s currently 12:15am there, and 95F!! by 6pm, the temperature will climb to 120F!!! with 50% humidity. this coming tuesday, the high will reach 124 F. as he said, you can’t really go outside.

that said, he was very helpful, and now i’m back up and running with adobe photoshop, bridge & lightroom, all of which i use a lot to adjust my photos.

WATERCOLOR 88 stage 1

before making the call, i started watercolor 88, and did some work on it while we were on hold, waiting for stuff to load.

i’m at that point where my rhythm was interrupted and am hesitant to go back into it, although i do feel it needs more work. i certainly have enough of these watercolors to choose from for the carbondale show in august. i could spend the rest of my afternoon organizing images for my next zoom with brian at carbondale arts, and talking with his people at the frame shop in carbondale to arrange framing for the final selection.

watercolor 87 /  by Philip Tarlow

watercolot 87 at 6pm

6:10 PM: i had to return to the studioto strategize with adobe about how to update adobe cloud so that it’s compatible with the latest apple os. i’ve been working with the 2004 version of adobe bridge, so it’s about time! i had to go over to the studio again after having come back to the house, in order to begin the adobe cloud update on my iMac. so of couse i did a bit more work on the watercolor, sine i was there and on hold forever.

watercolor 87 stage 1

4:15 PM: we took our trail walk this morning. as we started out, it was 38F, which is way below normal for this time of year. but it started warming up quickly, and our walk was dleightful, except for the fact that, after pointing out a head high tree trunk stradling the trail to mikela, i smashed straight into it myself, and fell to the ground. i’m ok, albeit a bit rattled.

i upgraded to the latest apple os: catalina, and learned after the fact that adobe bridge no longer works with that os, and i have to contact adobe to figure out what to do. so i’m using my macbook air to adjust the photos and enter this post.

i started watercolor 87, but didn’t have time to complete it. so i’m calling what you see here stage 1, which i’ll continue working on tomorrow.

watercolor 86 /  by Philip Tarlow

2:31 PM:today started out with snow at about 4am and the temperature hovering just below freezing. not at all unheard of here in crestone/baca. curently it’s 53F and probably won’t get much warmer. tomorrow it will start warming back up to normal levels: lower to mid 70’s. but when we leave the house at 6:30 tomorrow, it will be about 38F and we’ll have warm jackets.

watercolor 86 at 2:30pm

today i made a new small format watercolor: watercolor 86, 10 x 13". something is brewing, which hasn’t quite matured yet, but there are elements, like my use of blues, greens and greys that are developing. branches appear increasingly as negative white spaces, and water is hinted at with bold green or blue strokes with mottled white spots equaling frothiness. the central siena rock shape is one i had misgivings about from the moment it emerged. so i may make a variation on this one tomorrow, minus that rock.

(daily kos article)watercolor 85 / From Nina Simone to Buffalo Springfield (and beyond): When music becomes an anthem for a movement, a daily kos article /  by Philip Tarlow

1:49 PM: today i launched straight into watercolor 85. it’s 13 x 20” and is a variation of the theme of watercolors 35 and 65 (below, left and right respectively). the giveaway is the horizontal log traversing the entire composition, which is a tricky element in the composition, in the sense that it’s difficult to keep it from stopping the eye 3/4 of the way up. what prevents that from happening, in this case, is the strong log on the bottom left and the dark area just beneath the horizontal log, on the right.

nina simone

From Nina Simone to Buffalo Springfield (and beyond): When music becomes an anthem for a movement (a daily kos article)

this is a link to the article, which has many links to songs of protest over time:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/6/7/1950162/-From-Nina-Simone-to-Buffalo-Springfield-and-beyond-When-music-becomes-an-anthem-for-a-movement

before and after our trail walk / hozier / watercolor 84 /  by Philip Tarlow

yesterday morning we watched the hozier video, jackboot jump. WATCH IT! it’s as if he made it for us, now.

watercolor 84 10 x 13”

3:54 PM: after making a ridiculously bad one in the larger 13 x 20 format, i did this 10 x 13” watercolor 84.

i like how that little red mark in the middle left nails that whole area, and the playfulness of the greens in the upper regions. the browns just beneath that happened at the last moment, and it’s hard to imagine this watercolor without those marks and that color. all in all, it’s a joyful statement, perhaps influenced by our magnificent and long morning trail walk.

by the way, the wind has been gusting to 40 mph all day, making it a delightfully cool one.

6:20 AM: so i didn’t get to start watercolor 84 yesterday because of an important 2 hour call. we had some good thunderstorms yesterday, with occasional hail and this morning is windy & cool; great hiking weather.

i’m going to get my boots on and get ready for our trail walk , which this morning will be a full hour up the trail, starting at 8,400 ft. and going up to 9,400 ft. on a steep, rocky, gorgeous trail!

i’ll resume blogging when we’re back my friends.

just back from our very exciting trail walk; exciting because we reached the falls, at 9,750 ft about 1 1/2 hours after starting out at 8,400 ft.

AND, my new salomon quest 4D 3 GTX boots passed the test with flying colors. they are everything the stellar reviews claim, plus they are the first boots i’ve worn on our treks that didn’t trigger my mortons neuroma pain in the ball of my foot! if you’re looking for excellent hiking boots, look no further.

12:41 PM: about to start work on watercolor 84. will post pics as they become available

hiking; then and now / starting watercolor 84 /  by Philip Tarlow

11:06 am: soon after mikela and i met, in the mid ‘80’s, we started going on hiking trips to northern california. now we hike up the trail every other day. we get as much, if not more pleasure from these hikes today as we did then. BELOW: left-1985 right- 5/31/2020

11:10 AM: i’m about to start work on watercolor 84 and will post pics when available later in the afternoon.