2:21 PM: stretching a the 4/29/21 painting after removing the masonite support. I’m stretching a new one as well, to start working on tomorrow morning.
10:46 AM: here are 3 detailed views of the second in this series of 4 26x78” paintings for my denver gallery.
4/29/21 creek oil as it looked moments ago
6:50 PM: mikela & i went over and looked at it. it’s much stronger in person. much stronger. we both felt it was complete, so when it dries, i’ll bring it to the house & hang it in the living room for the final evaluation. i wish you could see the actual painting!
2:28 PM: i did quite a bit more since my 11:58 am post, including collaging a drawing my grandson philip made in february, 2018, of a window, with his signature on the back faintly bleeding through. either it’s completely out of place, or, as i suspect, it makes the whole composition click. on the left of the window is a section of a map of paris. the log that tranverses the entire composition is what you might call a device. i’m not fond of devices, except when, as i believe is the case here, they are essential to the whole, and not what i would call a gimmick. the truth is, if you could accompany me to our local creek, you’d observe many such logs, which have fallen in a strong wind or been swept down the creek by strong spring melt-off currents. the map of paris not only hides some green leaves, of which there were too many, but introduces another, different patterning in addition to the wavy ripples and the white dots referring to the bubbling water.
there’s plenty of opportunity here for your fantasy to spin out; from landscape elements to animal forms and yes, sexual innuendo.
DETAIL of the paris map & philip’s window. if you look carefully you’ll see his signature in red bleeding through.
11:58 AM: this morning i resumed work on 4/29/21 creek oil, which is painted over one of my less interesting sound of a flute series oils, 26x78”
i added a few collaged pieces, including a map of our area. the painting is still pondering who the hell it is; sound familiar? it know it’s not a realist painting of a creek. it knows it’s not a pure abstraction. i’ll keep working and see what happens between now and 3pm, when i usually run out of juice. but then, as you all know, i’m likely to do something significant just before walking out the door. more later…
by the awy, in the foreground of the above photograph is beyond the easel,” a book about the adventures of the nabis in making large, decorative paintings, thumbing their noses at the more traditionalist painters of that era.
3:07 PM: this is where i’m stopping for the day. it’s coming along, but it’s not there yet.needs to breathe. and a dash of red might help. tomorrow. the medium my dear friend john in houston recommended for collaging paper onto the painting is working great!
it’s good that the horizontal branch shape was broken up by the collaged white paper. i especially love that deep red collaged bit of oil palette over on the left.
4/29/21 creek oil at 3pm pm 26x78”
11:51 AM: continued work on 4/29/21 creek oil: i decided a few days ago to paint over one of my sound of a creek series oils, which are all 78x26” so i turned it horizontally and am working into it. i’m awaiting delivery this afternoon of a substance i will use to collage some paper to this one, which is why i placed a piece of masonite the same size as the stretcher bar beneath the canvas, in order to be able to press down on the collaged pieces and secure them to the surface. here’s how this very early stage looks right now.
10:33 AM: while having my matcha tea & bagel this morning, i looked critically at portrait of m.b. and noticed that his teetch needed to be toned down a notch, which i just did. i’ll mail it off monday, and it will be a surprise since he knows i shot photos on that day we stood talking in front of the gallery, and i did mention i might use them to make a small portrait, but he doesn’t know i actually made this painting, so it will come as a surprise. BELOW: you can see the slight difference if you compare the teeth on the let (before) and the right.
4:32 PM: i’ve been going through photos i shot in 2009 at the acropolis museum, which at the time had just opened. there’s a lot of material i’m going to start using once i’ve completed these four creek oils, which my denver gallery requested i make for possible sale to a client.
reflection in the windows of the acropolis museum restaurant & deck
what you are looking at in this photo is a reflection in the windows of the restaurant area of the museum. the hill you see in the background is lykavitos in central athens and the people sitting and eating are on the deck overlooking the acropolis, which is not visible in this shot. it’s a spectacular setting!
and in the photo on the right you see the walkway leading to the museum entrance. in the background is, of course, the acrololis, and beneath the curvedf glass barrier in the foreground you can barely make out the ancient ruins that lie beneath the entire museum and are visible through the glass floor; a brilliant architectural solution.
1:05 PM: i un-stretched a 26x78” canvas. underneath, i placed a piece of masonite i got yesterday in salida and am now re-stretching it so that when i apply collaged elements there’s a solid backing. removing the staples was a huge pain in the ass, as well as a strain on my hand & shoulder. so i decided to revert to the tried and true older method of hammer & carpet tacks. the can very easily be removed, which i’ll have to do once the painting is complete in order to re-stretch without the masonite.
i’m waiting for some mediums i ordered to be delivered, which i’ll need to facilitate laying down the collaged pieces, and in the mean time i take little breaks to fine tune my portrait of m.b., in gouache on paper, which currently looks like this.
i made improvements to his mouth, eyes & beard, as well as enriching the shadows.
BELOW: before & after today’s work on the portrait
4:47 PM: this is a photo shot on november 11, 2015 at gremillion & co. fine art in houston, where i had my ano kato exhibition.
my ano kato series is on this page:
https://www.philiptarlow.com/best-left-unsaid
now that images from above have re-entered my repetoire and are being integrated into creek images, this long time passion of mine is coming alive. in going thorough old photos, BELOW are some i came across that may find their way into new paintings.
3:55 PM: this morning i made the one hour drive to salida for a dermatology appointment. as long as i was there, i did some food shopping, picked up a pressure indicator for our well pump and got a 26x78 piece of 1/8” masonite to place under whichever of the 4 canvas i’m working on for space gallery. that will allow me to collage onto the canvas, preventing it from giving way under the pressure.
around noon, it began raining in salida, and by the time i left to return to crestone, it was coming down heavily. as i drove over poncha pass, which is at about 10,000 feet, the rain turned to heavy wet snow. but it only lasted as long as i was approaching the peak, and when i got back into our vally, the sun was shining & it warmed up to the high 50’s.
on the drive back, approaching crestone and looking north towards salida, the stormy weather i drove through is visible
4:46 PM: i didn’t do any more work on yesterday’s gouache: portrait of m.b. instead, i was moved to do a bit of studio organization and cleanup. there’s a lot more to do, but, as you can see from the comparative photos below, the space does feel more open. i focused a lot on that west wall which, as you can see in the photo on the left, was piled with painintgs in a disorganized mess. post cleanup, on the right, all those paintings have been consolidated in the corner, leaving my painting wall as open as possible, until we can move those paintingsup ot the loft and, eventually, into a storage container outside the studio.
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
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
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.
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.
