a cloudy, cold day with snow predicted later this afternoon / watercolor/collages 161 & 162 /  by Philip Tarlow

5:36 PM: once i got back to the house, i saw that 163 needed more work. impatient, i couldn’t wait till tomorrow. so i took some colored pencils i have here in the house and worked into it. i may do more tomorrow in the studio, but here’s how it looks now:

watercolor/collage 163 as it looked at 5pm this afternoon, following modificatipons in colored pencil & flipped horizontal

12:07 PM: it was 3F this morning, and it’s not much warmer now. snow predicted tonight….maybe 2-3 inches.

DETAIL: watercolor/collage 162 11 x 15”

i made two new paintings today. at first, i tried integrating figures into these abstracted landscapes, as i’ve been doing recently. it was coming too much from my head, so i stopped and focused my attention on the essentials of color, line/mark-making and composition. as a result, something more liberated emerged. abstraction, in the end, can be a way to enjoy and explore those basic elements, finding new aspects of yourself in the process.

the fact that i’m a damned good realist painter doesn’t automatically tie me to that mode of expression. so for now….at least for today, i’m reveling in the experience of pure form & color. sure, you can detect a plant here, a branch there, a ripple in the water…all of the above have been drawn, brushed, collaged onto the surface. but my delight in creating unexpected, unpredictable imagery wins out today. and i feel oddly liberated as a result. philip-ness has evolved one little step.

BELOW: left-watercolor/collage 162, right-watercolor/collage 163

WATERCOLOR/COLLAGE 161 /  by Philip Tarlow

watercolor/collage 161 11x15”

DETAIL

3:41 PM: this morning i started work on a new one: watercolor/collage 161. it has 4 female figures, all based upon the photos i shot last year of high school students in alamosa preparing to enter canoes and paddle on the river that runs through alamosa. there’s a fifth figure at the bottom, which i’ve used in earlier watercolors. there’s an ambiguity in this one. what’s that log doing there, larger than any of the figures? and are they standing in the grass or in the water?

watercolor/collage 160 / study of liang kai's 13th c. fan painting /  by Philip Tarlow

3:44 PM: i’ve been looking at this collage for weeks, maybe months. it was an experiment i did, taking a watercolor, cutting it into squares and then collaging the squares together, 4 to a row, to make a new image. it sort of worked, but lacked coherence. your eye wanted more direction. so i started working into it, and included the image of a figure i had photographed last year who, with other high school students, was preparing to get into small canoe like crafts and navigate the river in alamosa. . we’ll look at it tonight & see what we think.

watercolor/collage 160 15 x 10.5 “

earlier in the morning, i made a study of a fan painting by 11th c. chinese master, liang kai. it’s titled poet strolling by a marshy bank. he served as a painter-in-attendance at the Southern Song Painting Academy in hangzhou from about 1201-1204.

my study doesn’t do his painting justice, and i may make another one tomorrow. nonetheless, it was a great learning experience. i began to understand why this painting is considered one of the most disorienting compositions in chinese art, challenging our perceptions of reality. i’ll say more about this tomorrow. right now, i want to return to our house and mikela’s arms.

continued work on 158 yesterday with no time to post new watercolor/collage 159 /  by Philip Tarlow

watercolor/collage 159 11 x 15”

2:35 PM: starting watercolor/collage 159: i started this new one this afternoon. there’s no collaging as of now. the three elements: a girl gazing at a semi-circular white object; a creek rock with water and the branches of a tree are, unlike the previous one, BELOW, stark and clear. the negative white spaces of the arches watercolor paper is as much a part of the total composition as are the areas where watercolor was applied.

watercolor/collage 158 12 1/2 x 10” watercolor & collage on arches paper

10:59 AM: yesterday evening i posted the changes i had made to watercolor/collage 157. i was about to post chages i made to 158, but got involved in another project. so here are yesterdays changes, which i think complete this one.

the earlier version looked like what you see BELOW left. it was a watercolor inspired by our creek walk a day earlier, on december 9. yesterday however, the prospect of continuing along those realist lines seemed utterly boring. i then painted in one of the female figures from my opening at space gallery, viewed from above, from there i started collaging until i arrived at a point where it felt complete. it was the end of my work day, i was late for our stupa walk but i wasn’t completely satisfied with the result. so, working very quickly and of necessity getting completely out of my head, i added a few collaged bits: the ones from a map, with blue & black dots, & called it a day. getting out of my head is part of my daily process. it starts first thing in the morning, with my meditation.

so now i’m about to dive in to my next project, and i have no idea what that might be. i’ll update when that becomes clear.

revisions to watercolor 157 / continuing watercolor/collage 158 /  by Philip Tarlow

6:06 PM: i did more work on watercolor/collage 157 this morning. the back and legs of the central figure walking up the stairs were bothering me. so i worked on them, staying with the overall feel of the painting. i did more work on the back of his head, and there’s also a new collaged piece just to our right the head. finally, i worked on the garment, introducing shadows that add depth and movement. for me, that bit of light blue and pink in the newly collaged bit next to his head comletes this painting. it’s one of those in the moment discoveries that can’t be planned. and it’s one of the reasons you see such an abundance of cut up bits of previous watercolors, maps, etc. on my collage work table.

you can compare the two versions BELOW

continuing watercolor/collage 157 the story of the girl at pithara / starting watercolor/collage 158 /  by Philip Tarlow

the creek at the base of the stupa trail yesterday, 3:40pm

stage 1 of watercolor/collage 158

2:26 PM: we’re about to start our stupa walk in 45 minutes. a full day, it’s been, as you see from today’s post. about an hour ago i started work on watercolor/collage 158, inspired by a photo of the creek i shot on yesterdays walk.

it’s still in an early phase. nonetheless, it gives us clear signs of where it’s headed. it’s likely that, tomorrow, collaged elements may be introduced, which will transport it from a realist painting of the creek to an event beyond realism and into dream-space.

11:36 AM: arrived early at my studio following a quick trip to town for diced tomatoes to be used in our spaghetti dinner. mikela and i are experimenting with one of the many hundreds of activities in our middle/high school product, actionlab360. this activity involves blanking out words with a marker in an article you like, to create a poem. so before jumping back in to yesterdays watercolor, i did the experiment, and here’s the result. the idea, for the kids, is to become more inventive with words and meaning.

having completed that first experiment (there will be more, and i’m going to propose it to my grandson philip in athens) i continued work on watercolor/collage 157, which i started yesterday, & is based on photos i shot last friday of the delivery guys bringing our new couches & pillows up the stairs. here’s what it looked like about an hour ago; not sure yet if i’ll do more or leave it alone for today & start something new. collaged elements have been added, the yellows have been intensified and i did some work on the legs of the guy in the middle. at first, creek water began roiling around his ankles. but that didn’t work at all (it was coming from my head, not my brush) so i collaged some white paper over it & reworked his lower legs in blue, which i like.

i’m in conversation with an author in greece, whose novel will be published in 2021. for the cover of the book, she’s using an image from a watercolor i made in 2005, of a girl on a rock at pithara, a small waterfall in the hills of the island of andros.

interestingly, she asked my to tell a little of the story behind the watercolor, and this is what i sent her. i’m positng it because i’ve been talking about putting together the story of my journey as an artist, and her request created an opportunity to dive in, albeit further towards the end of my story.

this is the cropped image of my 2005 painting the author has chosen for her book cover

“You will find the answers to some of your questions about the image on this page of my 2015 blogs:

https://www.philiptarlow.com/dailyblog/2015/1/26/10-years-agopaintings-of-andros-greece-in-gouache-on-paper-from-2005

This painting, in gouache on paper, was made in 2005. That year, over the Easter holiday, I visited my son Dimirtri in Andros, where he has a big, beautiful home on the sea, in the Plakoura neighborhood of Chora, capital of Andros. His grandmother, the great painter Niki Karagatsi, was born in this house.

Two of his friends from Athens were there, and one day we all went to Pithara together. Pithara is a beautiful, small waterfall in the hills near the village of Apoikia. I've made many plein air paintings of this beautiful spot, so I know it well. I shot lots of photos that day, and when I returned to my studio in Crestone, I used some of them to create the series of paintings you see on this page of my blog. The following year, they were shown in my 2006 solo exhibition at Skoufa Gallery in Athens. They are now in private collections in Athens. One of my favorite subjects is the human figure in the landscape. Corot, and so many other painters, made great paintings with this subject. My dear friend & mentor Tsarouchis made some of my favorite paintings of figures sitting & standing on Pnika, adjacent to the Acropolis.The attached painting is just one of many paintings I've made of figures in the landscape. This one is based on a photo I shot at a well known stone bridge on Andros, of a woman fetching something she sees in the stream. We'll never know what it was she saw. In the gouache you will be using for your cover, Dimitri's friend, lets call her Maria, is looking at the falls, with her back to us, awed by the beauty: the fragrances, the colors, the sounds of the falling water, the light....It may be that, in this fleeting moment, sitting on the rock, she had a flash of deep understanding of who she is in all of this, and how her identity is merged with, inseparable from, nature.

girl at the bridge, 2005, gouache on paper

My love affair with the figure in the landscape began when I was 6 years old. From 6 to 16 I spent 2 months every summer at Birchwoods, a camp in Huntington, Massachusetts, in the Berkshire Hills. You can learn more about Birchwoods on my Story page: https://www.philiptarlow.com/chatty-bio There was a worker who, every afternoon, would stand in a relaxed pose, leaning on his shovel, and gaze at the landscape. He struck a deep chord in my soul, which guided my journey as an artist for the following seven decades. In Athens, he was personified by a street sweeper in Plaka, Athens. He worked just below my studio window, overlooking the Tower of the Winds. His name was Kyriakos, and I made countless paintings & drawings of him in my studio, leaning on his broom in much the same way as the worker in Birchwoods leaned on his shovel. Gazing out my studio window, seeming to contemplate the universe. In reality, he was watching in case his boss showed up and caught him posing for an artist when he should have been working!

BELOW: one of my many paintings of kyriakos with his broom, to which i refer in my email to the author in greece.

starting watercolor/collage 157 /  by Philip Tarlow

watercolor/collage 157 22x15” stage 1 (maybe)

2:45 PM: we’re walking up to the stupa in half an hour, so i’ll be brief. i started (and completed?) watercolor/collage 157 this morning, and worked on it all day until a few minutes ago. once again, the couch delivery team provided great material; this one is form shot i took as they brought the couch pillows up the stairs. i love the vertical format. the bit of map on the upper window collages over the valley view, which was becoming too specific & detracting from the cubist-like geometry of the composition. remember, this is, first and foremost, a painting, consisting of marks in a 2 dimensional surface singing a song and dancing to the music.

my collage table is getting interestinger by the day. there’s no real way to make it “orderly;” bits of cut-up earlier watercolors vie with maps, old paper palettes, tape & glue to retain a visible spot on the table, only to be buried an hour later.

modifications to watercolor 155 / starting watercolor/collage 156 /  by Philip Tarlow

2:47 PM: i made some additions to watercolor/collage 155 this morning, and then started watercolor/collage 156. the changes to 155, aside from the removal of the mask on the figure to the left, are collaged pieces attached temporarily, so that we can look at them & evaluate tonight & tomorrow morning. so i can remove any or all that don’t work in the composition.

the initial drawing for watercolor/collage 156 has that beautiful simplicity i love; lets see how long it lasts! we’re taking our stupa walk now, so until tomorrow.

watercolor/collage 156 17x22” stage 1

tweaks to watercolor/collage 153 & 154 / starting watercolor/collage 155 /  by Philip Tarlow

i made some small but critical additions to watercolor/collage 153 & 154, then started watercolor/collage 155, also based on photos i shot of the new couches being set up 2 days ago. a lighter touch and more spare compositions characterize all three of these.

BELOW, top row: on the left is watercolor/collage 153 as it looked yesterday; on the right you can detect a few additions in the figure on the left. and on the bottom row is watercolor/collage 154, where you’ll see some changes to the figure on the left and around the plants. they are minor additions, but important to the balance of the overall composition.

once i completed the above tweaks, i strated work on watercolor/collage 155. i have mixed feelings about using a photos of figures that’s not shot from above, since that’s what really turns me on. at the last minute i added a passage from 153 & 154: the figure on the right (mikela) with the red door frame. the two guys arranging the new couches are wearing masks & gloves, and the view out the windows is of the san luis valley, looking west. a few marks have been collaged onto the figures, removing them one step from a naturalistic portrayal.

crop of watercolor/collage 152, continuing work on watercolor/collage 153 / watercolor/collage 154 / the easy chair /  by Philip Tarlow

watercolor/collage 153 as it looked at 4pm

watercolor/collage 154 at 4pm

3:48 PM: so i’m calling it a day. i continued to work on both watercolor/collage 153 & 54, going back & forth between the two so as not to get stuck on one or the other or to overwork either of them. so far, so good.

154 is clearly not as far along as 153, and 153 has the edge in terms of that first burst of inventiveness that comes out the first time i’m riffing on a new photo, which in this case is one of the shots i took yesterday of the couch delivery seen from above. that bit of collages blue in 153 is hard to match, as is the freshness of the marks.

watercolor/collage 153 at 2pm

2:23 PM: i did a bit more work on watercolor/collage 153, adding a piece of paper palette with grey marks and a bit of map behind the head of the figure to the left. simultaneously working on watercolor/collage 154 is helping me take it slow with this one.

in my new easy chair, taking it easy. above my right shoulder: the revised watercolor/collage 153

watercolor/collage 153 with new collaged element in blue

12:13 PM: yesterday our new couches were delivered to the house & a close friend took the old ones for use in his studio. there was a matching chair, which haas a new home next to the main door in my studio. tried it out for the first time today, and i love it! i.m able to gaze clear across the 40 foot length of the studio & look at whatever i’ve got sitting on my 2 easels & on the east wall. or, as i’m doing in this photo, i cangaze out my south windows across the valley to sisnaajini (mt. blanca).

above my right shoulder is the newly revised watercolor/collage 153.

watercolor/collage 152 post-cropping this morning

10:58 AM: watercolor/collage 152 was getting way too crowded for me, and it was overworked. so i cropped it and it will remain watercolor/collage 153.

and so now i’m diving back in to watercolor/collage 153. i’ll update a bit later, once i’ve done some work.