starting the day earlier / 2012 paris metro drawing / 9-23-20 watercolor-collage next stage of yesterdays watercolor 123 /  by Philip Tarlow

stage 2 of watercolor 123, which i started work on yesterday

4:16 PM: i just completed work on stage 2 of the watercolor i began work on yesterday: watercolor 123.

watercolor/collage 124 13 x 20 “

DETAIL: watercolor/collage 124

1:59 PM: i had a crazy night, with ominous dreams mostly connected to our current political/health environment.

i’m moving ahead with this new process of collaging over past problematic watercolors, sometimes working into them with watercolor and gouache. i have a big box full of a variety of papers: maps gifted to me by my dear friend dan; old paper palettes; old pieces of note paper with, in this case, writing i don’t recognize; pieces of cut-up old watercolors…

the collages i made 8 months ago, in january, 2020, were somewhat more muted in tone. as well as more predictable compositionally. you can compare the two BELOW. on the left: 1/11/20 collage, and on the right: watercolor/collage 124, just completed moments ago.

SITE-2012 Paris Metro drawing.jpg

8:50 AM: i’ll be in my studio in about an hour, and should be able to start my day a lot earlier than yesterday. in the mean time, here’s a drawing i made on the paris metro in 2012. who knows when we’ll be able to get back to paris again. i miss making these travel drawings, including the series i made at coffee shops in edwards and carbondale, colorado.

TRAIL WALK / starting watercolor/collage 123 /  by Philip Tarlow

4:37 PM: it’s hard to get up steam after we take our morning trail walk and i arrive in my studio so late. that said, i did start, albeit tentatively, watercolor 123, and cut up and began re-arranging the pieces of an earlier watercolor i wasn’t happy with. that’s what you see BELOW, and tomorrow morning i’ll take these further with fresh morning energy.

3:02 PM: we took our trail walk this morning, and these are some of the photos i shot, some of which i will be referencing for new paintings. as we walked, the thought occurred to me, which i’ve had in the past, that i should review my blog posts and make a selection for a small book. i have to ask squarespace whether it’s possible to extract all the posts in one fell swoop, so i don’t have to scroll through them all.

i’m about to launch into watercolor 123 and will post pics as soon as they become available.

revisioning watercolor 44 / EVENING SKIES /  by Philip Tarlow

watercolor 44 as it looked moments ago

4:25 PM: i go to my studio earlier than ever, but wandered about like a lost shoe for hours till i could get up steam. of course i learned that mikela had a similar experience, which made me feel better.

i’m currently choosing from my 2020 watercolor series and re-visioning ones that i feel could use it. watercolor 44 was a candidate, and here’s where it’s at right now.

BELOW is the before and after. you might ask what was wrong with it? i liked it better the way it was!

my answer: too predictable, with no saving grace. i mean, this is one of many with the same composition, based on one of my creek photos. but it just doesn’t sing. i know i keep saying that about various paintings; either it sings or it doesn’t. but look a the new one; just when your mind thinks you’re going to get more water, oops, you get a piece of rock! just when you think you’re looking at a tree trunk, ooops, you get a map of the netherlands! leaves emerge from clouds, painting turns to drawing and foreground and background tumble about like a couple making passionate love. it breathes! it sings! are you convinced yet?

and that spot of yellow….what can you say about that? it anchors the whole f—king painting!

7:29 PM: this evening as we had our dinner on the deck, the skies indicated coming changes, with possible afternoon rain over the next few days.

THIS EVENINGS SKIES

a 1972 athens gouache / continued work on watercolor 121 /  by Philip Tarlow

watercolor 121 at 4:15pm today

3 PM: watercolor 121 has gone through a number of stages today, mostly involving the use of collaged elements. once i turned it upside down, it began making more sense compositionally. when it started getting too busy, i introduced more white space. when it started out yesterday, there was abundant white space, but it was lacking in staccato rhythm. too predictable. it may be that the introduction of that orange-yellow shape in the center allowed it to begin singing. getting rid of those concentric blue circles, which were ripples in the water, seemed like a sacrifice, but they ended up being a distraction. likewise the log was too loggy and needed to be broken up so that it could join the band. harkening back to the collages i made last year, a sliver of a map of the netherlands also joined the party.

BELOW: 3 of the stages watercolor 121 went through today

12:31 PM: i continued work on watercolor 121. i decided after looking at it last night and this morning that it would greatly benefit from a few collaged elements. as i was working, i flipped it upside down, and liked it far better that way. this has happened numerous times before/ it shifts my set perception of what the painting is in my mind and moves it towards what it could be. clearly, this holds true for ourselves as well; our persona. an abstracted creek painitng has morphed into a mysterious event.

BELOW: watercolor 121 yesterday (left) and just moments ago

watercolor 120 9/18/20

7:49 AM: this 1972 gouache on paper hangs in our house. it’s the view out my tsudio window in athens, in the direction of the tower of the winds, but looking down at the street. there i could see kyrios yannis, who’s self created job it was to park cars in the neighborhood. next to him is his cat. he was a gentle soul.

what i noticed when i shot a photo of this little painting yesterday, is that my current sense of space in painting, for example in watercolor 120, painted a few days ago, is present even back then.

watercolor 121 /morning trail walk /  by Philip Tarlow

watercolor 121 at the end of my painting day

on the trail this morning

4:06 PM: today is rosh hashanah, the jewish new year. my dad always said that the 10 days between today and yom kippur is a time to meditate on the coming year; our dreams, our vision….

today i go a late start; we didn’t return from our walk until just before noon, so i didn’t have much time to get any work done. in addition, after the news of justice ginsburg’s passing, we didn’t get much sleep so at this point we’re pretty zonkered.

this new watercolor 121 may undergo modifications tomorrow when i’m fresh, and we’ll see if i continue to employ collage, as i did with watercolor 120.

more work on abstract random 1 and watercolor 120 /  by Philip Tarlow

produce at suzanne & kent’s gig at the kiosk today

3:22 PM: i went back into abstract random 1 as well as watercolor 120 and spent the entire day on them. i think they’re both greatly improved and, for me, visually compelling. i have to run right now, but maybe i can write more about what happened today after we run into town and get more of the delicious local tomatoes at the kiosk, from our friends for years, suzanne and kent. right: right

6:42 PM: over the past 2 decades, there has been a clear evolution in my painintgs inspired by the creek.

this is very apparent in the paintings BELOW:

left: 2001, creek oil linen, 50x50”

right: 2020, creek oil 1, oil on linen, 26x78”

this evolution is also very clear in my current watercolor series. while only 5 months separate the two watercolors you see here; the one of the left was painted this past april and on the right, watercolor 120, which was completed a few hours ago. it’s revelatory even for me to make these observations more consciously as a result of this very post. i need a bit more time to digest this, but it did become clear to me today that the only way i could take this next step was to use use collage.

abstract random 2 in process / watercolor 120 /  by Philip Tarlow

abstract random 2 15 x 20”

2:44 PM: i completed abstract random 2 as well as a watercolor i started yesterday. interesting to see how they are influencing each other. i don’t think, for example, i could have made this watercolor had i not been considering the possibility i might cut it into little squares later on.

watercolor 120 10 x 13”

i learned a lot making random abstract 1 yesterday; mainly that the size of the squares i cut needs to be slightly larger, this one i completed today is much easier on the eye. it’s a lot more like good jazz, where the spaces, or pauses, function in a similar way as the pauses between in and out breath.

watercolor 120 is perhaps the first in this series that doesn’t reveal that the source of inspiration for these marks is the creek. it’s taken many months to get to this point, and a lot of it could be considered a gift from covid 19. i’m feeling much less pressure and urgency to call this person or make that appointment. pure creativity loves this space, as long as we are fortunate enough to have a roof and food and, in our case, very clean air to breathe. the past couple of days have been an exception, as our valley has filled with smoke from the wildfires blazing in neighboring states. but the air will clear once again tomorrow, when the wind shifts.

at work this morning on Abstract Random 2

12:41 PM: emboldened by my experiment yesterday, i’m starting a larger composition & getting ideas for future directions.

newly adjusted digitized slides of past paintings / abstract random /  by Philip Tarlow

random abstract 1 12 1/2 x 8” gouache & watercolor on paper

3:10 PM: so what have i been up to since i adjusted the photos of early paintings you see below? i felt in the watercolor mode, so i started 3 of them, going from one to the other so as to switch it up. each of them had strong passages, so i cut them, along with one i did a few days ago into squares, face down on the cutting mat so as not to let the images influence where i made my cuts. the pieces are more or less square, which is a significant aspect of what i was up to. leaving the pieces face down and shuffling them like a deck of cards, i put some sticky tape on the back of each piece i chose and then flipped each piece over and stuck it somewhere in the evolving composition. some of course were blank, or almost so. i used my intuition as to where each piece would go, rather than making my decision by evaluating the entire evolving composition.

the result is posted on the LEFT.

Dr. Anthony F. Gregorc, is the creator of the Mind Styles™ Model of learning types, and according to that model i am somewhere between abstract random and concrete random. this may, in part explain what i just did, and why i did it. i find predictability, especially in art, deadening.

11:45 AM: this morning i checked out a small memory card containing digitized slides of past paintings. i had adjusted them when they were first digitized and hadn’t looked at them since. with the new desktop and the latest photoshop updates, i was able to make better adjustments.

the first 4 were painted in my athens studio overlooking the tower of the winds, in the plaka neighborhood, 1973-78. the view from my studio window can be seen in the painting on the 2nd row, right. on the top left, an almost completed (my easel, for example, hasn’t yet been painted in) painting that includes some of my favorite construction worker models. kyriakos, in the center, was a street cleaner who would come and pose for me. the others were workers from a nearby construction site. this painting was purchased from a 1974 exhibition i had at ora gallery, which no longer exists, near constitution square in athens. the woman who purchased it is no longer alive, and i can’t track down where it is. that’s a real shame, since it’s the final painting in a series i made over years.

according to Dr. Gregorc’s Mind-Styles™ model, i would fall into either the abstract random or concrete random mind style. it’s neither here nor there, but it could be an interesting way of understanding what i just did, and why i did it. i don’t like predictability. i think it’s deadly, especially but not only in art.

eight workmen with the artist painted in my athens studio in the plaka neighborhood, ca. 1975, oil on linen

in the 3rd row are 2 paintings done in andros, where my then wife, mother-in-law & son dimitri spent our summers. 3rd row left: the village of menites, a few kilometers from the capital, chora. and 3rd row right: a painting title calling home. this was the only long distance phone booth on the island, in front of the newspaper shop in the main square, kairis square, owned and run by my dear friend andonis polemis, a quirky, very funny, very intelligent guy, full of life. he published the only newspaper on the island at the time, which he printed on his hand operated press.

on the 4th row left: a painting in egg tempera on board inspired by a photo i took of myself and the deck of david hockney while i was house sitting for him in his hollywood hills home. he purchased it, and it’s now part of his collection. and bottom right: a painting also in egg tempera on board, of a reclining figure at the municipal building in northampton, mass. i know northampton well, as it is just 14 miles from huntington and norwich lake, where i went to camp from the age of 5 until i was 16., when i was no longer a camper and became the driver, going to and from northampton to pick up mail and groceries in the (camp) birchwoods station wagon. for more details, visit my story page in the drop down menu, above, or, go to this link: https://www.philiptarlow.com/chatty-bio

bottom row: one of a series of paintings of nyc architecture i made in the early ‘80’s, when i was living and painting in nyc, on central park west, and showing at fischbach gallery, located at the time on 59th street.

tweaks to 9/12/20 creek oil / watercolor 119 /  by Philip Tarlow

watercolor 119 10x13” on archesI watercolor paper

2:53 PM: after tweaking 9/12/20 creek oil, BELOW, i felt the juice for a new watercolor. what, another one?? that makes 119 watercolors! what kind of nut-job are you, tarlow?

well, ya see going back & forth between oils and watercolors seems to loosen up my strokes….AND my palette! if you look at the earlier ones in the series (click on 2020 watercolors in the dropdown menu) you’ll see what i mean. i’m definitely dancing and singing in many of those, but in this one i’ve hopped on my UFO and am winging my way into space. isn’t that red accent in the middle killer?

9/12/20 creek oil following a few final adjustments

2:51 PM: and one last little tweak.

DETAIL: the dark blue wavy marks were scraped and white highlights were added

12:09 PM: upon entering my studio this morning, i noticed that the central band of foamy, bubbly water in 9/12/20 creek oil was too harsh and not integrating well with the rest of the painting. i just now made a few changes. i’m going to move on to something else and see how i feel about it towards the end of the day. BELOW is a comparative view of yesterdays state on the left, and todays, moments ago, on the right.

if you make the images larger by clicking on them, then toggle back and forth, you’ll see the differences.

9/12/20 creek oil continued /  by Philip Tarlow

9/12/20 creek oil 16 x 16” at 2:30 PM today

2:29 PM: clearly, stage 2 needed more work. it wasn’t hanging togetger, hadn’t found it’s identity, it’s note. scraping & wiping & then working into it may have worked; i’ll know better tomorrow. when i cast glances at it right now, sitting on one of my easels, it makes me happy. good sign, no? the wiping & scraping brought some of the blue into the white, and visa-versa.

1:44 PM: i’m continuing work on the painting i started yesterday: 9/12/20 creek oil. i softened the blue and white of the middle band of roiling creek water, added a rock on the lower band and added to the upper band of forest and trees. BELOW: yesterdays version on the left.