stretching a new one so i can go back & forth / stage 2, 3 & 4 of yesterdays 12/19/20 creek oil /  by Philip Tarlow

3:11 PM: BELOW are stages 1,2 & 4 as i prepare to return to the house on a rather unexpectedly gloomy cloudy day. i wasn’t expecting that grey to enter the picture, and i’m not yet sure how i feel about it. i’ll see in the morning. for now, this is it. i’m continuing to feel energized by this switch from months of watercolor/collage on paper to oil on linen. but i still haven’t gotten used to having to clean my brushes & wear gloves most of the time.

at work on 12/19/20 creek oil, stage 3

1:58 PM: a new grey rock has appeared on the mid-right, as well as those red creek plants i so love

1:13 PM: i was about to unstretch an older painting & stretch a new one so i could go back & forth between the two & not get stuck on one. but i couldn’t resist diving back into this one i started yesterday, which now looks like this.

BELOW: a comparative view of stage 1 (left) and 2.

some scraping has taken place, and the whites in the center are new.

i’m going to keep working as long as i’m into it., then maybe i’ll stretch a new one for tomorrow?

ano kato 29 32x32”

11:54 AM: when i entered the studio & cast my first look at this one i started yesterday, i could see it needed work. but instead of having all my eggs in one basket, i’m unstretching ano kato 29, which you see here so i can use the stretcher bars for a new one. this painting i’m about to unstretch is based upon photos i shot at MOMA 5 or 6 years ago. personally, i love that green helicopter suspended above the museum goers. this painting is available, so if you’re interested, let me know. the rest of my ano kato series can be found here:

https://www.philiptarlow.com/best-left-unsaid

painting in oil after a long break /  by Philip Tarlow

2:40 PM: i’m about ready to stop for the day so we can take our stupa walk. i’m glad i decided to warm back up to painting in oil with this smaller 32x32” canvas, before moving on to the long, narrow 26x78” one. what you see here is stage 1, which will likely change significantly tomorrow morning. i’d like to see the blues toned down. i may work on it lying flat on my sawhorses tomorrow, which allows me more freedom of movement and less plotting and planning. more kinesthetic, less head.

i might, looking at it now, paint over the whole thing; an option i didn’t have while i was making all those 165 watercolors!

at work this morning on a new oil painting

12:41 PM: i can’t really tell you how long it’s been since i painted in oil on linen. a very long time. in covid time, years. centuries.

so i started with the 32x32” one i stretched last week, leaving the 26x78” i stretched yesterday till after i warm up. my new ability to drip, scrape and sweep my arm is intoxicating. it reminds me of why i switched to watercolors way back then: my shoulder injury. no sign of that today, although i do need to be careful. careful and oil painting don’t, however, go well together.

i’ll post updated pics later this afternoon.

a different kind of day / pantings as poems /  by Philip Tarlow

4:55 PM: today i finally did it: i stretched the 26x78” canvas i’d been thinking about for weeks. it’s the same dimensions as my sound of a flute series, which of course were all verticals. but this is destined to be a horizontal, like the two fairly recent oils we have hanging in our living rooms.

BELOW: one of my favorite quotes in how to look at chinese paintings:

radical changes to 163 / changes to my 2020 watercolors page LOOKING BACK TO JULY /  by Philip Tarlow

6:04 PM: while cleaning up my powerbook desktop i cam across this watercolor/collage made in july. i was in the thick of the series, still revelling in the new marks i was experimenting with at the time, just 5 months ago. it reminded me just how much of a role that freshness plays in my work. it almost felt that i was using watercolors for the first time, even though i’ve been using them for many decades.

3:49 PM: i just did a preliminary reorganization to my 2020 watercolor/collage page. click on the 2020 watercolors dropdown menu, above to view it. or click on this link: https://www.philiptarlow.com/new-page-4

2:09 PM: i made some radical changes to watercolor/collage 163, which may change again tomorrow. today i learned of a motion series painting that sold in denver. following that news, i decided it would be a good idea to update my 2020 watercolors page, which i’ve been busy with until now. 163 before i made todays changes….it may have to be trashed. 3:28 PM: so i did indeed trash it. sometimes you just have to surrender to the fact that a particular piece can’tr be salvaged & stop struggling with it.

BELOW are the before (left) & after pics of watercolor/collage 163

of two minds... /  by Philip Tarlow

watercolor/collage 164 at 2:30 PM this afternoon.

2:29 PM: here’s where the new watercolor/collage 164 is at right now. i’m preparing to go back to the house so we can leave on our walk in about 1/2 hour. current temperature: 22.8F.

you may be able to discern a few new blues, which are in the package with the watercolors i received yesterday.’while this one, in it’s current state, resembles previous watercolors, something new seems to be emerging. it’s an odd combination of a greater sensitivity along with a greater boldness. i’d say this derives from my constant and ongoing study of the chinese masters, who, at their best, untite these qualities in a manner unique in the history of art. more tomorrow, and i may post about or adventures on the trail this afternoon once we’re back.

1:34 PM: in a few hours we’ll be taking our stupa walk, so i only have another hour of work i can do today. it’s our first walk since the snowfall this past weekend, so we’ll have to see how the trail looks. if, as we suspect, a few cars have driven up, we can walk in their tracks and avoid the deeper areas of snow so it doesn’t get into our boots. of course we’ll have our cleats on, since temperatures haven’t risen above freezing at all this week, and there will be ice beneath the snow.

this morning i was of two minds about which direction to take. i’ve been leaning towards oil on canvas for several weeks, but today was not the day. i tilted towards watercolor, especially since i wanted to try out some new colors that ups delivered yesterday. windsor newton added in a folding metal watercolor box with the order, which was an unexpected treat. you can see it over to my left in this photo.

as has been my practice over the past months, i perused how to read chinese paintings while having my morning coffee. my awe and wonder at these 8th-17th c. chinese masters of the brush only increases over time.

so i’m going to keep going with this new watercolor/collage 164 until it’s time for our walk, around 3 pm. i’ll post pics before leaving or, if there’s no time, when we return around sunset.

shifting gears /  by Philip Tarlow

12:51 PM: today i decided to act on the feeling i’ve been having for weeks, and prepare some canvases for painting in oil. rather than use new stretcher bars, i decided to un-stretch some older paintings, roll and label them & store them in my loft area. if there is interest in any of them, i can always re-stretch or, if they need to be shipped, it’s easier to ship them rolled & let the new owner re-stretch and frame them. this is one form 2017, i think. not sure because it doesn’t have a date. but when i run across others in this vein, at least some will have dates & i can label them more exactly. i do have them somewhere in my files, but don’t want to spend time on that right now. so this is the one i un-stretched just now. it’s 32x32” and the subject matter is the living room of our friends gary & loekie, in the netherlands.

and now i’m going to get back to stretching a new linen canvas on these 32x32” stretcher bars. then i may apply a tinted beige ground; haven’t yet decided. more later in the afternoon.

David & Zia's Interior, 2017 32x32%22.jpg

while cutting the linen canvas, it made sense to find another painting the same size as the one above, to make optimal use of the canvas.

i came across this one. it’s another interior, also 32x32” painted in 2017, this one what once was the home of two friends here in crestone, who are no longer together and no longer live here. it was filled with beautiful patterns and colors, with a dominance of pinks. before un-stretching it, i may contact our old friend to see if he’s interested in purchasing.

so after un-stretching the 32x32” painting of the netherlands interior, above, i cut a piece of linen canvas to the correct size and proceeded to stretch it. you will notice that the back of this primed linen has a tan color letting you know it’s linen, not cotton, which would be white. there’s a big difference. linen is a much finer, stronger, resilient surface to paint on, but a roll is far more expensive than cotton. my experience is that it’s well worth it, both for the wonderful way the brush moves over the surface and it’s ability to remain taut and not buckle under pressure.

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.