remembering my 2006 solo show at skoufa gallery / continuing work on new ano kato 5 / sunset skies /  by Philip Tarlow

5:43 PM: today was the first day in a while that we had some clouds. as a result, we had more interesting skies at sunset. here are a few i shot moments ago.

as you know if you read my blog posts regularly, i love reflections, especially the dimensionality created by the superimposition of a reflection seen in our east facing window of the sunset as seen in our west facing windows, which is what you are seeing in these two photos.

i haven’t thus far made paintings inspired by these photos; that may be coming in the future.

new ano kato 5 12x16” watercolor, gouache, crayon & collage on hot pressed portofino watercolor paper

DETAIL of new ano kato 5

2:40 PM: i’ve reached my limit for today, plus i want to go back to the house early since mikela isn’t feeling well, and of course we want to watch early returns from the election. i spent all day working over the drawing i made yestarday for new ano kato 5. the initial drawing, now largely obscured by collaging and marks in gouache, crayon and conté, was inspired by photos i shot a while back, as i said yesterday, of a group of school kids in alamosa (50 miles south of crestone) preparing to go out on the river in little canoes. they were standing in the tall grasses bordering the river, dressed in colorful protective gear. when it began moving too far in the direction of description, i collaged over that passage. but the figures are still discernible. perhaps the most intact figure is that of the teenager with his back to us, in the center of the composition, with the backpack & red bandana. the seeds of what i’m doing can actually be seen in the 2006 painting in the front window of skoufa gallery, below.

in front of skoufa gallery at my solo exhibition, 2006

8:14 AM: these are photos from my 2006 solo exhibition at skoufa gallery, adjacent to kolonaki square, athens. with me here is the late andonis polemis, a hugely beloved figure in chora, on the island of andros, greece. we’re standing in front of a painting in oil on linen of andonis at his hand operated printing press, where he published the one and only newspaper on the island. his shop, next door, sold athenian newspapers as well, along with a variety of other small items. he loved riding his bike around town, as well as on the narrow roads outside town, where he often came perilously close to having an accident. once he fell off his bike and hurt his leg, and asked me at dinner that night to tell his wife erató that it happened when he fell off a ladder in the shop.

later this morning i’ll continue work on new ano kato 5, for which i began the drawing yesterday. i’ll probably return to the house a bit earlier than usual to watch the election returns with mikela. i predict a biden landslide.

so where do we go from here? / new ano kato 4 framed / starting drawing for new ano kato 5 /  by Philip Tarlow

new ano kato 4 in a temporary frame

starting the drawing for new ano kato 5

1:54 PM: i put new ano kato 4 in a temporary frame, which allows me to evaluate it far better. and now i can consider it resolved and am moving on to the drawing for new ano kato 5. this one is based on photos i shot a few years back, in the BC era (before Covid). some alamosa high school kids were preparing for an outing on the river. their getup was colorful, and seeing them against the backdrop of the river and the tall grasses inspired me to make a new painting. i won’t get past the drawing today though, as it’s our walking day & because of the earlier sunset, we need to leave in about half an hour if we want to get back while it’s still light. it’s still unusually warm for this date: 58.4°F with no wind, so the snow & ice that was on the trail will be almost completely gone, and we can dress lightly. we’ll go a bit further up today, and try to be exceedingly careful on the downhill; i can’t afford another fall!

7:44 PM: today we’re taking or every-other-day trail walk earlier, at 2:30 because the sun is setting at 5 now. so i need to get an early start in my studio. i’m excited by this latest directoin: basically combining my ano kato work with my creek inspired watercolor/collage series. i consider the two most recent paintings in this vein as successes. i do have more ano kato photos to use, but i’d prefer if there were more. i have to do a deeper search, because i know there are others. it’s just that there are over 34,000 iphone photos stored in the cloud and i don’t want to spend too much time searching.

in addition, i want to spend time each week researching ways of selling my paintings online. galleries aren’t doing much these days, but there’s a thriving market for paintings online. and with my CV, having my work in so many private, corporate & museum collections, my work should be attractive to potential buyers. there’s a sales portal right here on squarespece; i should start there & learn how to use it!

found this photo of me holding my grandson philip in andros when he was a baby while searching through my icloud photos. philip will turn 15 in july.

new ano kato 3 slightly revised and new ano kato 4 begun /  by Philip Tarlow

3 PM: but it’s really 4 pm; SO confusing!

new ano kato 3 following todays modification

the grey rectangular bit on the upper right of new ano kat 3 was bothering me, so i broke it up with 2 pieces of map, which solved the problem.

new ano kato 4 at 3pm

i started new ano kato 4, which is based on photos i shot the same day as yesterdays painting. this one also combines watercolor and collage, with the collaged elements including bits of maps and earlier cut up watercolor collages. the collaged piece on the lower right, where the girl’s hair should be, is interesting. looking at it, i think i may do another half hour or so on this new one.

oh, by the way, for any of you who grind your teeth at night, with resulting damage to the enamel and general stress on your jaw, you’ve got to get a night guard! it’s estimated that 10-20% of people suffer from what is termed bruxism, or night time grinding of your teeth. i was able to find a far more affordable night guard at js dental. they send you a mold, you bite into it, wait for it to harden & send it back. then they mail you your night guard. dentists charge $350 up to $850, whereas this costs just over $100. i had a very expensive one made by a dentist a few years ago, but after several crowns it no longer fit. this one is just as good, maybe better, and not only do i notice a marked improvement in the quality of my sleep, but the molar i was going to have a root canal on is far less painful and i may be able to avoid the root canal altogether.

new ano kato 3 /  by Philip Tarlow

2:38 PM: this new ano kato 3 watercolor-gouache/collage is based upon photos i shot at a friends house in alamosa. a bunch of kids were gathered eating & drinking food she’d prepared for them. i liked how the whole scene looked from above, so i stood on a chair and shot a few photos with my iphone. this morning as i examined the printout i made, my eye came across a cutout strip of an old oil palette intended for collaging. my gut said “use this.” so i did, as well as a cut out piece of a van gogh reproduction that’s been lying on my collaging table for quite a while, and a small piece of map. there was a pup on the scene, observing from a distance. got to wrap up now and get ready for our afternoon walk.

more later.

new ano kato 3 watercolor, gouache and collage on watercolor paper 12x16”

yesterdays trail walk/sunset/moonrise / new ano kato 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

3:15 PM: i made a new gouache today: new ano kato 2. it’s based on photos shot from the upper floor of space gallery in denver, where i was having a show.

BELOW: ano kato 1 & 2 together on the easel

8:21 AM: it was too icy on the cottonwood trail yesterday, so we walked up the stupa trail. shorter and less visually interesting, but no snow & ice. at the start of the trail, we saw the creek roaring with snowmelt, snow covered rocks…quite stunningly beautiful!

two night ago i photographed the moon rising over the sangres as the sun was setting. it only lasted for a few minutes, so i had to be quick, even though i was on my was down the stairs, food in hand. what did we do before i-phones?

starting the first new ano kato /  by Philip Tarlow

12:07 PM:about to start the first new ano kato gouache; i’ll update when i can…

ano kato II 1 10x13” gouache on paper

i started, and perhaps completed the first small ano kato II gouache, which is 10x13” not yet sure where this is headed, but i will likely make a few more of these small gouaches before moving, perhaps, to a mid-sized oil on linen. there’s a newfound freedom entering the picture. in the first ano kato series, the figures were not as loose. something new is emerging, and i just have to stay with it to learn what that is.

this is, by the way, based upon one of the photos i shot in the then brand new acropolis museum in athens in 2009. the floors, as you will see in future paintings, are transparent, allowing for some very interesting lighting effects and, on the lower floor, permitting a view of the ancient ruins upon which the museum was built.

searching through photos for ano kato possibilities /  by Philip Tarlow

1:51 PM: i’ve been searching through photos on an old drive for photos i might want to use for a new ano kato series. before i go too much further, i’ll print a few out and see what happens on a small scale using gouache on paper. there may be some collaging involved; we’ll see. BELOW are a few of the ones i’ve selected thus far. on the top row are photos shot in the athens acropolis museum in 2009

moving on /  by Philip Tarlow

detail of an ano kato painting in progress; this one based on photos i shot at the metropolitan museum in nyc

3:51 PM: today i gazed critically at the 138 watercolors and watercolor/collages i’ve made over recent months. you who are regular visitors to this site have followed this process. today something different happened. i looked at some older work, and saw that what i’m currently doing, while it may be more evolved from what i was doing a few years ago, it’s basically the same dance of creek inspired biomorphic shapes. and when i went back to 2015 while scrolling through the more than 34,000 photos in my i-cloud files, i saw in many of them the same use of collaged elements breaking up the image in a fashion not unlike what i’m currently up to.

i noticed i was becoming a little tired, even bored with this path. i felt a longing for the excitement i felt making my ano kato series of paintings: you’ll find that page under WORKS, above, or copy this link & visit the page. https://www.philiptarlow.com/best-left-unsaid

i have an appetite for revisiting that spirit of views from above, which i’ve always been crazy about. ano kato, by the way, means topsy turvey in modern greek. so i’m thinking i might start down that road, possibly starting out with small gouaches on paper and progressing to mid-sized oils in the 36” range. i have a feeling that what i’ve learned making all those watercolors will show up big time in this proposed new work: looser, freer more overtly painterly brush strokes and more boldness in the colors i use, departing form the mostly earth tones found in the ano kato series.

BELOW: on the top row: one of the ano kato paintings in process and, on the right, examining the completed painting on the easel in my studio, shot in 2015. the subject matter is derived from photos i took in MOMA.

on the bottom row: a detail of one of my gaze series paintings in process, and on the right, another gaze series painting in process, showing my use of collage, including pieces of maps.

cropping watercolor/collage 137, 134 & 133 creating watercolor/collage 138 / snow last night continuing into this afternoon /  by Philip Tarlow

watercolor/collage 138

4:28 PM: towards the end of my day in the studio, emboldened by all the cropping i did, i made a watercolor of a beautiful log i had photographed on our last trail walk. i immediately cut it out of the piece of watercolor paper it had been painted on, leaving a very interesting negative shape in the watercolor paper. i cut the remaining positive shap into small biomorphic pieces and used some of them, in addition to a piece of map, to make this new watercolor/collage 138.

a crop a day keeps the extraneous away!

watercolor/collage 137 after cropping

3:53 pm: an interesting day, indeed! i started out by severely cropping watercolor/collage 137, which i had worked on extensively yesterday. i kept the left side and discarded the right. well, not actually discarded; it still exists, just not as a completed piece.

after cropping it, i placed it on the back side of a piece of linen canvas and placed it ina white frame. the plexi distorts it a bit, but you get the idea. everything i loved about the larger, pre-cropping piece is here: the elegant branch cut from an earlier watercolor, which continues down the composition with lines in watercolor directly on the board; the understated blues and greens; the outlines of rocks in grey watercolor and the zinger on the lower right, sealing the deal.

i had placed 133 & 134 on my easels, temporarily framed by white mats, which cropped the originals. after cropping 137, i realized i like these two way better this way. BELOW you will see how they look.

watercolors 133 and 134 cropped by mats

BELOW: watercolor 133 and 134 before placing the mats over them

9:47 AM: so far we’ve gotten 4 3/4” with more expected later this afternoon, and of course quiote a bit more up on the peaks. this should move the needle at least a little on our drought situation, and hopefully will help with the wildfires currently burning. as i write this the temperature is 15° F and not expected to go above 22° F.

it will be kind of dark in my studio, but i’m hoping to get some work done this afternoon. i’ll update once i have photos of todays process to post.

more work on watercolor/collage 137 as the snowstorm approaches /  by Philip Tarlow

watercolor/collage 137 as it looked moments ago, at about 2pm

2:03 PM: as the wind picks up, the temperature drops and the clouds race by, announcing the immenant arrival of what may be a major snowstorm, i continued work on watercolor/collage 137. i’m walking that edge, asking politely that my mind be quiet while i listen to my gut and pay attention to my sense of space. i do cast glances at the ones i’ve done recently and steal from them what worked, while making it new. probably what any decent songwriter or novelist goes through.

at the same time, now that i’ve broken my own rule about not collaging over other collaged pieces, i’m conscious of not doing that too much and in so doing creating too many layers, which can end up looking messy.

pieces of older watercolors i wasn’t happy with and cut up are serving me well today, especially the ones containing branches. the one i just collaged a few miniutes ago, with the green on the upper right, really struck a chord, enabling the entire surface to vibrate and sing.

BELOW

on the left, yesterdays version. you can see that what i took out by collaging over it: the map bits ceter-right and the green and pink piece of paper palette in the upper center were essentially fragmenting the composition, whereas the bits that have replaced them add coherence, and allow the successful area on the left to breathe and sing its song.