day 1 of portrait of m.b. /  by Philip Tarlow

3:02 PM: i’m leaving 4/23/21 creek oil as it looked yesterday and taking a portrait break. this is day one of portrrait of m.b., 10x8”, gouache on paper. it still needs work, so i’ll continue tomorrow morning.

it’s suddenly become very windy, and we’re going for our trail walk in just a few minutes, so i’m signing off for now.

moments ago i sent off my proposal for a talk i’d like to give at the first U.S. exhibition of my old friend & mentor, yannis tsarouchis, in chicago. more about this later.

6:42 PM: everything we saw, heard smelled on our walk was vibrantly alive and in the process of regenerating. why shouldn’t we too be part of the process? my dad, before he passed, had certainty that we too regenerate and come back.

day one: portrait of m.b. 10x8” gouache on paper

continuing work on 4/23/21 creek oil /  by Philip Tarlow

7:04 PM: a long day, it’s been. mikela came over and took a look, and i’ve decided to leave it as is, at least for now. so i’ll start something new tomorrow, but first i have to stretch a new canvas.

each one is a journey. you don’t know where it’s headed, and there are surprises, especially if you collage. but even if you don’t, marks are uncovered when you scrape; an inspired mark with a loaded brush…

1:39 PM: as work progresses today, what you could call punctuation points are coming into play. i don’t have to enumerate them; just compare this latest image with the one i posted below 2 hours ago.a few areas of white ice forms, along with the strong blues and touches of orange pop the image into focus, giving the eye a kind of home base to return to after roaming the space of this horizontal composition.

4/23/21 creek oil 26x78” at 3:30 pm today

11:32 AM: i went over the painting with a light wash of titanium buff, did a lot of scraping & scrubbing with solvent and began working into it with oil pastel. i’d like to add collaged bits, but i’m going to have to un-stretch it and place it on a hard surface so that the canvas doesn’t give when i start pressing the collaged bit i want to adhere.

if you compare it with yesterday’s version, you will observe that some of the strong diagonal marks indicating tree trunks have been softened or are gone; the strong violet bit on the upper left is integrated into the whole, and some additional rock forms have appeared on the lower right.

4/23/21 creek oil 26x78” at 11:30 am today

day 2: 4/23/21 Creek Oil /  by Philip Tarlow

4/23/21 creek oil 26x78” at 1pm

1:02 PM: the composition is beginning to coalesce. the two tree trunks provide structure, and the brush swipes on either side contain the action.

4/23/21 creek oil 26x78” at noon

12:14 PM: 4/24 4/23/21 creek oil day 2 at noon. green areas were introduced on the right. back to work now; will post when the next stage is ready.

4/23/21 creek oil 26x78” at 10:15am

10:50 AM at a time of day i’m usually just getting started, i’ve already done my first round of work, thanks to our new earlier-to-bed, earlier-to-wake schedule.

i continued work on 4/23/21 creek oil, applying a few collaged bits and using alizarin violet lake; an oil color i don’t normally employ.

starting 4//23/21 creek oil /  by Philip Tarlow

4/23/21 creek oil 26x78” at the end of my painting day

3:28 PM: shall we call this end of day jazzI? if you are a regular, you know this happens almost every day: after cleaning my brushes and preparing to walk out the door & go back to the house, i get a sudden urge to do what could be compared to a jazz riff. i take what i’ve done & riffa bit. enough to make a difference, but completely in tune with what already exists. call it what you will; a riff; a scrumble; a flish…it usually works in that it gives more poetic meaning to what happened earlir and, in this case, introduces a new color: blue.

DETAIL

2:34 PM: i started work on 4/23/21 creek oil a while ago, so far limiting my palette to three or four colors and maintaining lots of white space.

4/23/21 creek oil at 2:15 pm.

12:46 PM: i was able to get out the ripples in the canvas by removing some staples & re-stretching those areas. so i’m ready to start painting. i’ll update later this afternoon. we got a little wet snow last night; maybe 1/4 to 1/2”…not much but every little bit counts, to keep us out of extreme drought.

stretching two new 78x26" canvases / morning sky / 2019 drawing i just found /  by Philip Tarlow

the just stretched 26x78” linen canvas

4:16 PM: ABOVE: the newly stretched 26x78” canvas. you will notice some ripples in the center, which i”ll take care of tomorrow morning, after which i should be able to start working.

12:01 PM: we’re getting up earlier, eating dinner earlier & going to sleep earlier. so today we were up at 5:30, and as a result have lots more time to get work done in our most productive morning hours.

i drove to town to pick up a package & on the way back photographed this view of the mountains with a partially cloudy sky. the weather will be unsettled for the next few days at least, with moderate to strong winds. we won’t be able to resume our walks up the trail today because mikela has a zoom related to actionlab360, which will be entering schools here in the slv (san luis valley) this coming fall.

i’m about to embark on a new adventure, spurred by a request from my denver gallery. it will involve making 4 horizontal painting/collages, each 26x78” which will be in the vein of this watercolor/collage

i discovered this 2019 watercolor this morning.

2019 drawing of a chair

watercolor/collage 8, created on 1/28/21

our denver trip /  by Philip Tarlow

7:17 PM: just back from a two day denver trip. we had to leave at 5am in order to make it to our 9am doctors appointment. we didn’t make it. the roads were snow packed & icy, so we couldn’t go more than 30mph in many spots. so we rescheduled that appointment, but we did make it to 2 others.

we had a great dinner at the home of our indian friends, i delivered 4 paintings to my denver gallery and we did our usual food shopping at trader joe’s and costco. i was introduced to this boulder brewed ipa by one of the staff at trader joe’s. just tried it & it’s spectacular!

eager to get back to work in my studio tomorrow.

un-stretching a 2001 creek oil /  by Philip Tarlow

1:11 PM: this painting was made in 2001, a period when i was very active in my plein air paintings, which inspired this and other large studio oil paintings. it’s been leaning against the north wall of our living room, resting in a very substantial wood frame. it was too heavy to hang without assistance, so we just kept in sitting in that frame. a few days ago, as we were hanging some of the new 2021 creek oils (https://www.philiptarlow.com/2021-creek-oils) we both looked at it and felt that it was time to put something new in that cool wood frame.

so today i’m about to un-stretch this one so that i can use the stretcher bars, stretch a new double primed linen canvas and begin a new painting.

if you are reading this and are interested in acquiring this painting, let me know & we can discuss pricing.

after the snow / tweaks to yesterday's watercolor/collage /  by Philip Tarlow

2:39 PM: so i made one more change, which you can see BELOW. on the left: the painting as it looked yesterday, inthe middle, the painting at 2 pm and on the right, after the changes i just made.

2PM: i made some major changes to 4/16/21 watercolor/collage. not sure if they’re good ones or if i screwed it up.

it was simply becoming too fragmented, and, after putzing around for a few hours, i inserted the central feigure with her arm outstretched.

even though it might be a bit overworked, i prefer it to what it looked like yesterday.

from a distance, it reads almost like a cartoon, the way the colors are distributed . the new central figure looks as though she’s walking on water and the pieces of maps seem to be miles beneath her feet.

there’s one thing bugging me, which i’m going ot take care of right now.

i’ll post when i’m done with that.

8:00 AM: my coffee roasting & brewing process being complete, i’m about to meditate, make a quick run into town for some food supplies and then head over to the studio, where i may make some final tweaks to yesterday’s watercolor/collage.

after the snow stopped yesterday afternoon, we had another of our spectacular sunsets. you can see how warm the earth was in the fact that, even after only a few hours, most of the snow on the ground has melted. some pics BELOW:

continued work on 4/16/21 watercolor/collage / snow last night /  by Philip Tarlow

the usual last minute changes have occurred. this time very important ones, as you will observe if you compare this version with the earlier one below.

the collaged pieces of map i added on the lower half of the watercolor/collage simplified the composition and allowed the most interesting elements to shine.

the map, by the way, is of the area where we live here in crestone/baca. very familiar and much loved territory.

this habit of last minute adjustments is interesting. just as i’m about to walk out the door, i cast a glance at the painting and catch something that, just moments earlier, i hadn’t noticed. to act immediately on these aesthetic alerts, you could call them, is all important. tomorrow, i may not notice them. having spent my entire day looking at this composition, it’s become as familiar as mikela’s face & body when i return to the house at the end of every day.

if something is off, it alerts me, and requests that i take action in the moment.

i knew right where to find the rolled up bunch of old maps, and pulled out the first one that came to hand, not consciously realizing i was honing in on our home here in the baca grande, as well as the mountain creeks where we take our walks and i go to paint plein air. there’s no describing just how much this addition has made to my emotional relationship to what i did today.

could it have to do with the pages of popescu’s amazon beaming i read last night before falling asleep? it was all about his deepening relationship to the land, to the mayoruna tribe and to loren’s new concept of time itself.

3:07 PM: today i continued work on 4/16/21 watercolor/collage, which i started yesterday. i worked all day, as the snow continued to fall, albeit a rather light, wet snow.

i added some collaged elements, which are distributed throughout this piece. they introduce the unexpected, interrupt the logic we’re addicted to and introduce the element of play.

DETAIL of the new piece

at work this afternoon on 4/16/21 watercolor/collage

4/16/21 watercolor/collage at the end of my painting day

8:37 AM: we got about 3.25” of fresh snow last night. Although this is great for our snowpack & our yearly average, the future for precipitation in the entire Southwest is bleak, and will move progressively to extreme drought & unlivable conditions; maybe even in our lifetimes but certainly over the coming decades.

i should get to the studio by about 10:30 and will post re:continuing work on 4/16/21 watercolor/collage.

starting 4/16/21 watercolor/collage /  by Philip Tarlow

2:29 PM: after a snowy start to the day, the skies partially cleared & there’s decent light for working. i spent a few hours preparing new surfaces to paint on over the next week or so, as well as preparing and baking brownies. i purposely burnt them a bit so they’d be nice & crisp, and i added some walnuts too.

i started to paint 4/16/21 watercolor/collage about an hour ago. i love taking it slow, and waiting to learn what i might do next; the expected unexpected you could say.

i like how it started, and i think i may stop here for the day. after all, i don’t have any deadlines other than the ones i choose to impose upon myself, and it’s cool to come into the studio in the morning and be able to continue work on something new that’s poking it’s head about looking for a way home.