re-work of tokyo olympics 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

1:38 PM: following yesterday’s persian rose adventure, I looked at tokyo olympics 2 differently this morning. there seemed to be too much going on. plus, truth be told, I was looking for an excuse to continuing using the rich persian rose pigment I used yesterday.

I caught myself engaging in the very activity i’m so critical of in other painters: repeating myself. so I did schmeer quite a bit on, but quickly realized this is a whole different animal and painted over most of it with a warm grey, made even warmer by having the not-yet-dry rose underneath. it’s definitely improved, but not singing yet. just emitting sweet, gurgling sounds.

i’m treating this post as a break, and will dive back in shortly & report what happens.

PS: now that i’m glancing over at it, there’s something gorky-esque going on. he’s one of my heroes. a tragic figure with a tender armenian soul, who had a profound influence on dekooning.

DETAIL of tokyo olympics 2

tokyo olympics 2 26x62” as it looked at the end of my painting day today

revisiting 8/2/2021 creek oil /  by Philip Tarlow

1:34 PM: I had a hard time getting back to work this morning. I didn’t want to mess with tokyo olympics 2, which i’ve been creating over the past few days. and my eye kept going to 8/2/2021 creek oil which I had considered resolved. turned out it wasn’t.

so I started working back into it, using a persian rose pigment i’d never used before straight out of the tube without blending it with other colors. it’s made in Brooklyn, where I was born, by williamsburg, a small company that makes quality oil colors in small batches.

I borrowed some elements from yesterday’s painting, specifically the black rectangular patterning seen on the floor at the closing celebration of the tokyo olympics. it’s too soon to tell where this is going, but I must say it’s rather striking in it’s present state.

8/2/2021 creek oil as it looked moments ago in my studio

continued work/play: tokyo olympics 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

tokyo olympics 2 26x62” at the end of the day today

2:21 PM: I added another figure, which was drawn in but had no color yet. it’s a male figure in the lower right who is skating. his positioning anchors the whole composition, creating a syncopated rhythm which works with the theme of people dancing & having fun. i’m cooked, so i’ll clean my brushes and wait for mikela, who is driving back from alamosa as we speak and will stop by to look at the painting.

11:55 AM: mikela had to leave early for actionlab360 meetings in alamosa (50 miles south) so I arrived early in the studio and have been moving ahead with tokyo olympics 2. blue & light yellow bands of color now sweep across the 62” width of the canvas and a checkered pattern has appeared on the upper body of the central dancing figure. a suggestion of creek-scape has shown up in the upper region. the skateboarder with the yellow top leaps and others soon to appear dance, in a celebration ending the 2021 tokyo olympics. and i’m also celebrating: the arrival of my 4 five yard rolls of extra fine portrait linen. normally, this very fine textured linen is used for smaller scale works, mostly portraits. but I find it ideal for my style of painting; let’s call it painterly abstraction.

starting the color on tokyo olympics 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

3:27 PM: I took tokyo olympics 2 further following a quick trip into town to get some very fresh eggs from organically raised happy hens.

a tree branch spans the painting horizontally & you can make out some creek rocks drawn in above it. it will take a few days to get the whole thing moving. great fun working on my newly arrived extra fine portrait linen, which is super sensitive to every stroke of the brush or mark of a crayon. thus far one collaged piece of the drawing I made yesterday has appeared, on the body of the dancing boy in the center, making him sort of resemble a postman.

the skateboarder with the yellow top from tokyo olympics 1 has reappeared. a lot more will happen before it’s over, so stay tuned!

DETAIL of dancing woman

tokyo olympics 2 at 3pm today

12:28 PM: while listening to the youtube video of joni mitchell in london, 1970, i applied the first strokes of color. “don’t it always seem to go: you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone….” she sang. the first figure to receive my strokes is a guy dancing crazily to the music at the olympics final celebration, with black & green pants that have birds.

tokyo olympics 2 gets underway / "the same earth" by Lila troulinou, cover by pt /  by Philip Tarlow

preliminary drawing for tokyo olympics 2 26x62” as it looked at the end of my painting day today.

DETAIL of preliminary drawing for tokyo olympics 2

3:21 PM: so after stretching the primed linen over a piece of masonite to faciitate collaging later on, I began the drawing for tokyo olympics 2, which is 26x62.” this one too is based upon photos I shot on the tv screen of the tokyo olympics & the final celebration.

i’ll do more drawing in the morning, and it’s likely some oil color will appear. we’re taking our trail walk tomorrow, followed by a zoom with our friends in germany, so I may be getting a somewhat late start, like around 11 or 12.

i’m extremely grateful that I shot those photos from the screen, and that mikela hit pause when I requested, at just the right moment.

12:06 PM: last week I received my copy of “the same earth,” (το ιδιο χωμα) by λιλα τροθλινου. she requested and I gave my permission for her to use the painting you see for the cover art. it’s a painting I made in gouache on paper of a girl seated on a rock at pithara, a little waterfall on the island of andros.

it’s a historical novel which takes place on the island of crete, where two kids travel back in time and, in so doing, discover their identity and life’s purpose.

12:24 PM: today i’m completing the stretching of my new 26x62” canvas, and will likely start the drawing in a bit.

slight modification to "tokyo olympics 1" / a 1987 silkscreen titled “57th Street” / just made a drawing to cut up for next painting attaching the masonite /  by Philip Tarlow

8:17:2021 PT attaches masonite.jpg

2:30 PM: just screwed a piece of masonite to the rear of the stretcher bar to facilitate collaging. this will be removed once the painting is complete and the canvas re-stretched on the right side (the bevelled side) of the stretcher bars.

2:14 PM: as I prepare to stretch my next canvas, I made this large ink drawing of a drawer with my tools, designed to be cut into pieces for collaging onto the next painting

12:34 PM: got a late start today following our trail walk this morning. after gazing at tokyo olympics 1 hanging in the house last night & this morning, I brought it back to the studio for a few modifications. the purple shadow of the skate one of the boarder’s hands was bothering both of us, so I adjusted that. and while I was at it, I inserted that black rectangle beneath his feet, which is his skate board, as well as the flesh color of his left foot. I didn’t touch anything else, although I was very tempted to make one of my radical interventions. I think this one deserves to keep it’s spontaneous freshness and zing, so i’m moving on to something new. but first I have to stretch a new canvas from one of the 4 rolls of artful portrait linen pierre sent me last week. i’ll update once it’s stretched and I start the drawing for something new.

tokyo olympics 1 following my modifications this morning.

12:48 PM: I had a request for one of my ‘80’s silkscreens a few days ago. I created it while I was a member of fischbach gallery in nyc, in the mid ‘80’s. I still have a few of these here in my studio; if you’re interested in purchasing, contact me.

tokyo olympics 1 may have been resolved today /  by Philip Tarlow

1:15 PM: we had a back & forth with mikela, who said she was experiencing the actionlab360 stuff she was working on as already completed before she even started working. so I took her cue and it seemed to work.

new are the white creek-water bubbles, the log, the indications of trees & blue sky above & some filling in of colors on the figures, particularly the blue on the girl basketball player in the center.

BELOW is the painting following this mornings process.

tokyo olympics 1 following this mornings process

tokyo olympics 1 continues /  by Philip Tarlow

2:22 PM: with rumbles of thunder as a background, I picked up where I left off with tokyo olympics 1, which is 16x40 on two panels. I focused mainly on the right panel, with the women basketball players. I shot lots of photos on out tv screen during the games, especially when they showed views from above. pinks have appeared, complementing the greens on the left. more tomorrow.

resuming work/play on 8/2/2021 creek oil /  by Philip Tarlow

3:23 PM: I made some changes following my 12:36 post. they are mostly to the red headed figure on the left which, as you will remember, was originally upside down.i also made improvements to his skiff, which now has some shadows that weren’t there before. the curve of the craft now decends to his right arm, giving more definition to the handle he’s holding. and finally, I added the yellow paddle, which is important coloristically as well as compositionally. I wasn’t happy with the pink sleeveless shirt he was wearing in the photo, so I took it out and made him shirtless, other than the green wrap around his mid-section. the figure on the right underwent some changes to the lighting on his shoulders, which is now more pronounced, and to his right hand, which is now more defined.

from a distance of about 20 feet, as I now gaze at the painting, it reads well, and, I think, inspires the question ny times reviewer john russell posed in the quote at the bottom of this page, which is also at the very top of my home page.

8/2/2021 creek oil during my process of modifications this morning

12:36 PM: I was able this morning to continue modifications to 8/2/2021 creek oil. last time I worked on her, I flipped the red headed figure on the left so that he & his buddy are paddling their floats in tandem.by the way, i’m more conscious than ever of the words i’m using, the sentences i’m constructing because mikela and I have been watching pretend it’s a city, with fran leibowitz & Martin scorsese. a lot of this production rests on fran’s use of language, her cadence, the way she modulates her inimitable voice. i’m very aware of the musicality of language, so i’m drinking it in, and she’s in my head as I write this blog post. it’s not for everybody, but I highly recommend watching it.

so anyway, it was with great relish that I dove back in to this painting. it’s not there yet, but it is emitting sounds that occasionally sound like song. originally, we spotted these guys from the bridge in alamosa. other kids were on the shore, preparing to launch their small crafts into the river. there was a festival taking place in the park and there was a festive atmosphere. so this scene fulfilled a number of my passions: figures viewed from above; activity that spurs more questions than it answers; as John Russell wrote in his ny times review of a nyc exhibition:

“ there is about him something of the storyteller, even if we never quite figure out what the story is. he makes us wonder what his people get up to when they aren't in the picture

-and that is after all one of the perennial aims of painting.”

preparing my grand central litho for shipment / evaluating yesterday modifications to 8/2/2021 creek oil /  by Philip Tarlow

6:26 PM: we finally went back on the trail this morning, after days of waiting for the smoke to clear. there’s still some haze in the valley, but it’s better.

i sold one of my grand central edition of lithographs, 48x48” so i prepared it for shipping to nyc today, carefully packing it in a sturdy tube. i still have a few of these l984 ithos, which i think is one of my best.

grand central station, located in midtown manhattan, is directly across the street from where my dad’s company was located. so i saw it on a regular basis, in various lighting conditions, reflected in the large glass skyscraper you see.