another paddling figure enters the scene in 8/2/2021 creek oil /  by Philip Tarlow

8/2/2021 creek oil. at 3 pm today

8/2/2021 creek oil. flipped 360° at 3 pm today

3:06 PM: I flipped the painting upside down and added another figure paddling his craft. this kid was originally right next to the one I painted yesterday, but that seemed too boringly obvious. the new kid has flaming red hair and is somewhat more muscular than the kid in the blue bathing suit.

the painting can be viewed either way and it works, which will be fun for whoever the new owner is.

compositionally, the curves of the craft form a semi circle, which kind of makes it look as if you’re looking down a large hole at the two of them, and that maybe they’re just paddling around in circles. the orange-red form to their right, or to their left depending on which way you hang it, is enigmatic. it started out as a cluster of mushrooms we saw on our trail walk.

i’ll see tomorrow morning what, if anything more I do with this painting.

painting 8/2/2021 creek oil earlier today

2021 creek oil: a figure enters the picture /  by Philip Tarlow

8/2/2021 creek oil ,26x62” at 1pm, with a new figure

1:11 PM: I painted a figure into 8/2/2021 creek oil this morning. it’s a guy we saw rowing a float in the river under the bridge near alamosa some years back. the entire composition makes a lot more sense now. I felt it coming, but didn’t know what it was going to be.

a little later: mikela & i stopped off at the studio on our way to the kiosk to get fresh corn. as always, she gave me some valuable feedback. it will all go into the hopper, i’ll sleep on it and in the morning, after our trail walk, i’ll see what happens. i never know, and it’s the not knowing i so love.

it’s the left side that doesn’t work. can i or do i want to plan out what i can do to allow this painting to sing? of course not. and that’s a fundamental difference between how i paint today compared with some years ago.

but that’s not etched in stone. right now i’m preparing to execute a commision, which will be a new version of the 2015 ano kato painting you see here.

ano kato 48 46x68”

but, while this new version may end up looking a lot like the original, it will be fresh and new. while it won’t have any collaged elements, which always offer the unplanned marks and shapes that spark unexpected results, every mark is new, fresh energy, colored by my mood that day; what i read over breakfast; even the weather that day.

back from boulder, continuing 8/2/2021 creek oil looking back at a painting of the met interior in process /  by Philip Tarlow

a painting in process, which i made in 2014, of the interior of the metropolitan museum in nyc

the painting you see ABOVE was in process when i shot this. it’s now in a private collection.

8/2/2021 creek oil at 4:30pm today

4:36 PM: and just one more flurry of strokes in mars yellow deep, over on the left, before heading back to the house for a delicious dinner of wild caught alaskan salmon drowned in fresh mango sauce.

3:43 PM: we returned last night from our trip to boulder. fortunately, I didn’t need surgery for my gum issue; it was just a bite issue, which was causing inflammation & could be fixed by slightly grinding down the molars. huge relief! we met with a dear friend, did a bunch of food shopping & got back at 9:45. four hours each way. I always have a very deep sleep after a trip like that, so i’m feeling pretty energized today, although I got a late start.

I resumed work/play on 8/2/2021 creek oil & took it quite a bit further.thus far there are only a few small collaged elements and no figures have yet appeared. I can feel them, anxious to join the party. but so far I haven’t been motivated to let them in.

8/2/2021 creek oil at 3:30pm

morning trail walk. /. 8/2/2021 creek oil 26x62” /  by Philip Tarlow

adjusting with my new desktop image, drawn from the collection of trail walk photos I put together today

4:05 PM: I got started on 8/2/2021 creek oil a while ago. I’m excited….I got the idea for this melange of trail walk photos while we were coming back from our walk, and it feels like a new adventure, after a few weeks of a dry spell, when I was thinking it’s all bullshit.

at work on 8/2/2021 creek oil an hour ago

8/2/2021 creek oil 26x62 in. in it’s very early stages

3:30 PM: I put together a melange of the photos I took on the trail this morning. that will become the initial inspiration of 8/2/2021 creek oil. this is it. more once I make a bit of progress on this new painting, which is 26x62 in. on quadruple primed linen stretched over masonite to facilitate potential collaging.

1:11 PM: as I was adjusting the photos I shot on our morning trail walk, I hit the “wrong” button & here’s what I got.

this opens new vistas. I need to hit the wrong” button more often!

starting a new canvas, more when i’m further along this afternoon…

4 recent paintings in progress on my south wall / making drawings to cut up & collage into a new painting I'm planning /  by Philip Tarlow

3:41 PM: these 4 recent painting/collages are hanging together on my south studio wall.

the two on top are watercolor/collages, and on the bottom, oil, oil pastel and collage on primed linen.

the one on the bottom is very different, in that it’s an ano kato view from above of visitors to the museum of modern art in nyc.

they are all subject to change.

3:07 PM: today i’m making a series of drawings with black ink on paper, which will be cut up and used in the next painting i’m planning.

once the rolls of primed linen I ordered arrive, i’m going to stretch new surfaces, which will all be 58x26” and make an interconnected series of paintings that can all be hung together, in 2’s, 3’s or individually. it’s something i’ve thought about a lot, and created different variations on the theme going back at least a decade. i’d like to use some of the themes that run through my work over that period to create something that reflects my present mood and vision.

with a monet water illies painting at MOMA, 2008

central park , 2008, sans smartphones / revisiting a 2014 series of metropolitan museum & museum of modern art paintings /  by Philip Tarlow

6:25 PM: i found these photos shot in central park, nyc, in 2008. no smart phones visible anywhere. how beautiful!

11:49 AM: I had a request for one of the paintings in this 2014 series of interior views from above of the metropolitan museum and MOMA in nyc. they are all in private and museum collections, so i’m suggesting that I do a commissioned painting of the one they choose, which will allow me to tailor it to the exact size they need. here are 6 of the paintings from that series, all oil on linen.

7/30/2021 creek oil, 16x20 in. /  by Philip Tarlow

7/30/2021 creek oil, 16x20” at the ned of my painting day today.

3pm: a complete re-work took place while you were napping. I think this is it for today. having some delicious fresh corn for dinner, which we got yesterday at the kiosk, from suzanne. t. & her husband.

i’m finding the little grill-like image at the top intriguing; that little bit in the center reads as the head of a figure when you glance at it. and that pink I added really works in the composition.

time to clean up & get back to the house. see ya tomorrow, friends.

1:44 PM: at work moments ago on 7/30/2021 creek oil

this one started out a while back as a crop of a larger oil/collage, and wasn’t going anywhere. so it was sitting facing the wall for 3-4 weeks & today was it’s day. i’ve been going back & forth between stretching 7/18/2021 creek oil after removing the masonite backing, and this one you see.it’s still not resolved, but better than it was and likely salvageable, if I persist tomorrow.

at work on 7/30/2021 creek oil 16x20”

9:12 AM: I brought 7/10/2021 creek oil over to the house to evaluate. here it is sitting on the floor of our entryway

boot repair: 7/10/2021 creek oil /  by Philip Tarlow

11:14 AM: I got some very helpful feedback yesterday from a dear poet friend in nyc who has one of the best set of eyes for evaluating paintings of anyone I know. it had to do with the boot in this painting. here’s a quote: “your shoe looks too much like a face, a kind of scary face to me….”

of course, she was absolutely right. so this morning I got right to work re-doing that part of the painting. the hiking boot is mine, and is part of a photo I shot on our trail walk 2 days ago.

my boot just doesn’t work as it appears in this photo. the patterns around the laces just don’t work in this context. so this morning, I took one of mikela’s lowa all black boots & used it to re-work the one in the painting, after collaging a piece of thin white paper over it. I made it a tad larger as well. my friend was so right about how the one I painted yesterday resembles a ghoulish face!

BELOW: yesterdays version of the left and on the right, what I did just now.

focusing on 7/10/2021 creek oil today / and a small modification to 6/10/2021 creek oil /  by Philip Tarlow

2:05 PM: today I felt like putting my attention on 7/10/2021 creek oil, which is 26x24”, oil/oil pastel & collage on stretched portrait linen. when it started out almost 3 weeks ago, the central figure was a little girl with a red cap holding her fuzzy blue toy. you can still see her, just to the right of the main figure, upside down, but she’s playing second fiddle to the large female figure bending forward to tie her shoe on the floor of a school we were going to, that was using our project based educational platform. what appears to be patterning in her blouse is actually bubbling creek water; part of the original composition.

the image of my leg & boot on the right is from a photo I shot 4 days ago on our trail walk. my leg was not the focal point of what I saw that made me stop and shoot; it was a time worn piece of bark with beautiful colors which had fallen from an adjacent tree to the trail.

before going any further with this post, i’d like to acknowledge all those who came before me. they paved the way for me to feel comfortable flipping a painting in progress 180° & painting over much of what i’ve done to date. this freedom was not always a given in the world of painting. certainly my greek mentor, tsarouchis wouldn’t have had this option in his rather large bag of tricks.

but I know for certain that he would have gotten what i’m up to, and applauded it!

7/10/2021 creek oil at 2pm today

BELOW: yesterday’s version on the left, and today’s on the right

mikela ambled over around 1 pm to take some watermelon I bought this morning back to the house. she looked critically at 6/10/2021 creek oil and zeroed in on the legs of the large, striding figure. it bugged her that his left leg just trailed off, giving a visual hint that perhaps he’s one legged. so after she left, I fixed that, and she was right, the lower portion of his torso now reads as though he has 2 fully functioning legs!

DETAIL of 6/10/2021 creek oil

6/10/2021 creek oil following my adjustment a while ago to the left leg of the striding figure.

further changes to 3 paintings /  by Philip Tarlow

2:12 PM: today i’m dividing my time between 3 paintings. the first is 7/10/2021 creek oil, which I worked/played on yesterday.

red and blue bands of color have appeared top & bottom, and an area of bubbly blue creek water appears on the right. a collaged piece further invades the predictability of the figure of the little girl in the red cap holding her toy.

7/10/2021 creek oil at 2:30pm

7/25/2021 ano kato. 16x20.

2:44 PM: the second painting I modified is 7/25/2021 ano kato. a few more touches of color have appeared on one of the 4 figures seen from above, as well as a small pool of bubbly blue creek water at the feet of the figure in green.

although it was quite a few years back, I have a distinct memory of leaning over the railing at MOMA, one floor above, and photographing these visitors to the museum strolling about. it took all this time for what I saw to distill into the poetry of what we see here.

3:31 PM: and finally, I made one significant modification to 6/10/2021 creek oil. there was something bothering me about that black sweater that the striding guy has over his shoulders. too much uninterrupted black…it needed something that would connect it to the collaged pieces of ink drawings scattered through the rest of the painting. I think what I did works but i’m still pondering what’s really going on in this painting. the right portion, now that it’s become a horizontal, has an almost gorky-esque quality, and i’m increasingly feeling that the striding figure on the left may be out of place in this environment, and that the rest of the composition wants to gobble him up! on the other hand, he’s like an anchor for all that’s going on to his right, and makes this painting more of a human drama than simply a cool abstraction. stay tuned, and we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

6/10/2021 creek oil after a modification I made this morning to the sweater thrown over the guy’s shoulders.