continued work on 2020 creek oil 3 /  by Philip Tarlow

3:51 PM: this is the final stage today….i was briefly considering abandoning the blank canvas on the left and usimg it for something else. but it was so cool to have a fully loaded composition on the right and something so spare on the left, and the challenge with that was to integrate the two somehow. more and more this is reminding me of the recent watercolor/collages i’ve been making. BELOW is an example of what i’m getting at. on the left is watercolor-collage 125 and on the right is the painting i’m currently working on: 2020 creek oil 3. i think this is a clear example of how the watercolor-collage series has impacted the creek oils i’m doing now.

2020 creek oil 3 at the end of my painting day today

3 PM: a new blank canvas has entered the picture, we’ll see if it sticks around…

2020 creek oil 3 -3pm

1:36 PM: this is how the painting looks right now, as i continue work. you can see that some naples yellow reddish has entered the picture, while greenish blue dominates the upper quadrant.thus the yellow on the rock at the right gains more resonance. the marks scraped into the wet paint may or may not continue to exist in my next round, coming up.

a clear progression is taking place. the 125 watercolors i made, starting back in march, led to a series of watercolor/collages, which paved the way for this latest 2020 creek oil series. how i am going about abstracting the always creek-based images is changing. i am freed more and more from the constraints, as i now see them, of local, naturalistic color, where rocks are grey, branches are siena and water is blue.

and now, back to work.

12:56 PM: i left 2020 creek oil 2 and for now am considering it resolved. so i picked up where i left off yesterday with 2020 creek oil 3. these smaller stretcher bars leave a lot to be desired; they are often warped, so i may have to rethink using them in pairs as i’m doing here, since they don’t fit together perfectly. here’s where i’m at after an initial session, but i’m about to make changes, so stay tuned.

2020 creek oil 3 16x40” on two 16x20” stretcher bars this is how it looks at the moment of posting

salida trip / todays in the studio-continued work on 2020 creek oil 2 / starting 2020 creek oil 3 /  by Philip Tarlow

3:23 PM: i had stretched some 16x20” canvases last month & they’ve been sitting on the floor of my east studio wall since then. after working on 2020 creek oil 2 this morning, i was in the mood & had plenty of fresh squeezed oils on my palette, so i grabbed two & got to work. here’s the result so far:

2020 creek oil 3 16x40” oil on 2 16x20” canvases

 

BELOW 2020 creek oil 2

2020 creek oil 2 26x78” oil on linen

1:19 PM: i resumed work on 2020 creek oil 2 a few hours ago. while having my coffee & before starting to paint i had the impusle to google diebenkorn; can you tell?

sometimes (all the time) you have to let go of your pictures of what something could be and just let it emerge as it will. this of course is old news; it just keeps renewing, making it new news. new news includes everything going on for you in the moment. somehow, it took a diebenkorn to remind me of that today.

the shipwreck sandwich

8:59 AM: yesterday afternoon we drove 60 miles north over poncha pass to salida, where we met with our dear old friend julie, i had a dental appointment, we did some food shopping and we picked up a couple of loaves of my favorite fresh baked honeywheat bread from sweeties. mikela also got me a great hot melted tuna & avocado sandwich they make, called shipwreck. we wore masks most of the time, although corona cases in salida are pretty low. even a short break from being in my studio usually results in a fresh perspective on my new work, so lets see what happends in an hour or so.

BELOW: two shots of sweeties sandwich shop in salida, colorado.

how many artists do you know who could /  by Philip Tarlow

11:39 AM: how many artists do you know who could make a pot of coffee, make a pot of oatmeal with fruit, nuts & seeds, work on an oil painting & get ready for an imminent trip to salida in the space of a little over an hour? here’s what i did during that narrow window, and we’re on our way!! more later…thanks for visiting my site on a regular basis; it means A LOT!

2020 watercolor-collage 125 / 2020 creek oil 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

2020 creek oil 2 26 x 78” as it looked moments ago.

todays palette, with my beloved persian rose in the lower right

2:55 PM: for some reason, which i’m going to attribute to debate exhaution and disgust, my energy is very low and i ache everywhere. mikela is feeling similarly but she has a good reason: the hard face-forward fall she took on our way back down the trail 2 days ago. her eye is totally black & blue, her knee got banged up and her entire body aches.

in any case, although i couldn’t imagine getting any work done today, i made brownies with walnuts and did some work on 2020 creek oil 2. it’s in an interesting place now. basically, i added the two logs you see, the swirls of blue, and those red strands we see growing in the creek, usually emerging from under a log or an embankment.

she loves her long-narrowness, which is very encouraging to my brushes skimming the surface and my palette knife scraping suggestive shapes into the wet oil paint.

she is breathing ok, but not yet singing in full throated bursts of sound, as do the HU. (they do mongolian throat singing with contemporary lyrics….do a youtube search; you will either love or hate them.)

creek oil 2 26x78” as it looks right now, a few days after whiting over it

watercolor-collage 125 10x13”

11:18 am: just arrived in my studio. this is the current state of creek oil 2 and the final version of 2020 watercolor-collage 125. i’ll be getting to work after i meditate & have some coffee.

what, more work on 2020 watercolor-collage 125? /  by Philip Tarlow

2020 watercolor/collage 125 today

DETAIL

2:35 PM: mikela took a bad fall on the way down from our trail walk yesterday & is pretty bruised & in pain, so i did some morning work on 2020 watercolor/collage 125 and came back to the house to keep her company. i was pretty sure yesterday that this one was resolved. but when i brought it back to the studio this morning & placed it on an easel, it called out for more. so i added even more layers of collage to an already collage-heavy little 10x13” piece.

i thought i’d surprise mikela and make some tapioca pudding to bring back to the house. but i mis-read the directions and dumped the whole packet of granules into the milk instead of 1/4 cup. a gooey mess ensued & the whole thing ended up being flushed down and almost clogging the toilet.

BELOW: left: yesterdays version of 2020 watercolor/collage 125 right: todays version

evolution of watercolor-collage 125 /  by Philip Tarlow

2:35 PM: about 30 minutes ago i whited over 2020 creek oil 2. something similar happened with 2020 creek oil 1 at about this stage.

2020 creek oil 2 just after having painted over it with diluted titanium white, just enough so that the underlying layer is faintly visible

watercolor/collage 125 at 1 pm today

1:12 PM: i did some more work on watercolor/collage 125 this morning; here’s the evolution over the past few days. i think this latest today i the most interesting and successful, but i have to sit with it more…in case you hadn’t noticed, i flipped it 180° today

now i’m going to put my attention on 2020 creek oil 2, which i worked on yesterday

2020 creek oil 2, stage 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

watercolor/collage 125 10 x 13”

3:56 PM: thjis is watercolor/collage 125, which happened today while taking short breaks from 2020 creek oil 2. i’ll see once i get it back to the house how it hold up. seems like it might be too strong, but i’m enjoying looking at it! the red stripe at the top left is a piece of a photo i was using last year for my ano kato series paintings, of a student walking down the school hallway, seen from an upper floor.

2:40 PM: i’ve added some strong cobalt blue shapes and green leaf shapes, given more definition to the log, provided the upper middle with more of a background look and whited over some of the underlying yellow. she’s starting to clear her throat in preparation for a song, but it hasn’t yet emerged. time for a break until tomorrows session. i imagine some level of simplification will take place, but right now i don’t anticipate a 180° flip, as i had predicted earlier.

2020 creek oil 2 as it looked at 2:15PM

1:21 PM: and here’s stage 3. grey forms have broken up that yellow, and reddish grey rock-like forms have appeared.

2020 creek oil 2 as it looked moments ago

12:23 PM: i just did some more work on 2020 creek oil 2. so this is stage 2, to be continued in a few moments. the yellow will be reduced and no longer dominate and my guess is that, after a bit more working into it, a 180º flip may occur.

2020 creek oil 2 as it looked moments ago

look what i saw as i walked from our house to the studio yesterday! / what will today in my studio bring? /small change to watercolor 124 / starting work on 2020 creek oil 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

stage 1, 2020 creek oil 2

6:40 PM: this is stage 1 of 2020 creek oil 2, which i worked on early this afternoon. it’s a preliminary sketch, realyy, and will undergo significant changes tomorrow. the deep red on the right is called persian rose, made by my favorite oil paint manufacturer: williamsburg originating from the williamsburg neighborhood of brooklyn, where i was born and spent the first 5 years of my life.

2:34 PM: well, here i am again in my beautiful, quiet, excellently lit studio! i’ve been looking at the newly stretched 26 x 78” canvas ever since i stretched it sometime last week, i think, (time is altered with covid, as you may have noticed). i made a change to watercolor/collage 124, which i started work on 9/22. in comparing the two, BELOW, you’ll notice a new blue in the central quadrant. it breaks up the grey, but more importantly, injects whizz into the composition, letting your eye know where it stands in this chaos we’re experiencing

there are lots of these on our property; i just never noticed them. they are very small and hug the earth.

8:38 AM: this is cactus-like, but not a cactus. perhaps my friend barb will know; i’ll send it to her. is that a scintillating red, or what? it will likely show up in a painting soon.

we’re awaiting a big change in the weather tomorrow night. our record breaking high temperatures will give way to possible snow showers sunday night, with a high temperature monday of only 57° F. todays high temperature, on the other hand, may be as high as 80° F, which would be a record high.

i might possibly start painting that 26 x 78” canvas i stretched a few week ago; we’ll see. my air compressor gave out after years of service, so until i can get a new one, i’ve gone back to the old tried and true technique of hammering tacks, which i actually kind of like. using the staple gun with the compressor isa bit too violent. whereas using a staple gun without the aid of a compressor is too hard on my hand and arm.

drawings from an old sketchbook i found yesterday /  by Philip Tarlow

2:34 PM: yesterday i ran across an old sketchbook with drawings form 2016-17-18. i chose a few to post here. i have many such sketchbooks filled with drawings, mostly from our travels. over the next few months, i’d like to begin documenting them, possibly for a publication.

TOP ROW: dan/ 2 starbucks drawings

MIDDLE ROW: colorado college drawing/sw airlines drawing/manio in nyc (my grand daughter)

BOTTOM ROW: 2 metropolitan museum drawings

more work on watercolor-collage 123 and 124 /  by Philip Tarlow

watercolor-collage 123, 13 x 20” moments ago, at the end of my painting day

3:48 PM: i think the work i did today on watercolor-collage 123 made a significant difference, and may have brought it to completion. the entire bottom segment of the composition has gone, and, in part as a result of this it now breathes. a couple of important touches or red have appeared, as well as a little yellow on a couple of the branches.  it’s not much, but enough to enliven the image and play handsomely off the blues and greens. in addition, and just as importantly, a scrap of note paper written by someone who’s handwriting i don’t recognize, provides an important space. this scrap was sitting in my pile of papers destined to be used in collages.

BELOW on the left you see yesterdays state. the composition was almost split in two by the passage at the bottom.

as well, i did more work on the smaller, 10x13” watercolor-collage 124, which is by no means resolved, but has progressed since i started it 2 days ago.

tomorrow morning we’ll take our trail walk, so i’ll get a later start.