morning trail walk /  by Philip Tarlow

9/22/2021 painting/collage was just hung on my studio wall

5:07 PM: our construction crew, consisting of two wonderful guys, came over at 4 and we finalized the plans for building the storage space addition to my studio, starting this week through next weekend. i still can’t believe that this dream is coming true. it will be 10x20 ft., with a concrete floor, just like the rest of the studio and two smallish windows. there will be a 3 1/2 ft. wide door on the south wall of the studio, and believe me, as soon as it’s ready, i’ll be bringing paintings, stretched and unstretched in rolls, into the space. later on, i’ll

1:54 PM: before diving in to my next project, I just now hung 9/22/2021 painting/collage on my studio wall to get a better sense whether I feel it’s resolved. although it doesn’t have as many layers or as much complexity as the others in this series, damn, I like it! next stop: our west facing living room wall, where we can see it in different lights and from 50 feet away.

12:58 PM: on our walk up the trail this morning, I shot only 2 photos and made no drawings. here they are in color and in black & white. I find them each far more interesting in black & white. this makes me re-think a few things i’ve taken for granted.

let’s see if it show up in what I do today here in my studio.

out to the creek for plain air this afternoon / LOOKING AT YESTERDAYS PAINTING/COLLAGE NEXT TO A 2020 WATERCOLOR/COLLAGE /  by Philip Tarlow

this is the second watercolor I made, 7x17 in.

3PM: i’m back from the creek, where the conditions were perfect. I made 2 watercolors, both of which reflect the progression of my work since I last went out to paint plain air. it’s been quite a while. I have to look at them for a while to evaluate what happened. but it does make want to go back out before it gets cold.

this is the first watercolor I painted, 11x13 in.

12:17 PM: i’m off to the creek to paint plain air. it’s been a while! here are my 2 bags with my materials. there’s also a light weight folding table I packed into the car. the one on the right is a small back pack.

SITE-9:25:21 plein air painting materials.jpg

11:39 AM: i’m contemplating going out to the creek with my watercolors on this, one of our last unusually warm days, just for a change of pace. if I decide to go, i’ll post whatever I paint once i’m back.

in perusing my 2020 works on paper, I came across this watercolor/collage, which in some ways anticipates the this detail of the painting I completed yesterday.

the detail of yesterday’s 9/22/2021 painting/collage is on the left; the detail of the 2020 watercolor/collage on the right.

continuing 9/22/2021 painting/collage after our morning trail walk /  by Philip Tarlow

9/22/2021 painting/collage at 4pm

5:15 PM: mikela saw it on my blog page & flipped out. so we walked back over to the studio to take a look. i trust her eye impicitly, and she feels strongly that i should leave it as is, and that oding any more might upset the delicate balance ,she feels, makes this such a strong piece.

4 PM: a last minute end run! what? unheard of! he’s making radical changes just before walking out the door!

seems like the best time to shift directions is when i’ve cleaned my brushes and am literally ready to walk out the door. one of the well known, at this point, paddlers has entered the picture, larger by far than any of the other figures in the composition. he’s still pretty sketchy, but his impact on the composition is huge.

he provides an anchor (no pun intended) for this previously scattered painting, which began with the flowers in the center, now largely obscured.it still feels busy, but we’re relatively early in the process, and I don’t really expect anything close to resolution until mid week. maybe sooner. making it up as I go is definitely my style of working/playing, and keeps it more like play and less like work. stay tuned.

9/22/2021 painting/collage at 3pm

DETAIL

3:01 PM: I spent an intense 2 hours or so continuing work on 9/22/2021 painting/collage, which is 42x54 in. the most obvious addition is the introduction of red on the upper and left sides of the painting, and 2 collaged elements ; one on the upper right and the second in the upper left corner. in addition, black rectangular shapes, inspired by the tokyo olympics celebration designs, have appeared.

the deep red color hasn’t yet fully integrated with the composition as a whole, and thus may appear somewhat jarring to you. that will all change tomorrow, when i’ll be able to get an earlier start, since it’s not a trail walking day.

12:52 PM: we had a great trail walk this morning. I made a small colored pencil drawing and shot 19 photos, some of which may be used in this new painting. here are a few.

9/24/2021 trail drawing, colored pencil on paper

continuing 9/22/2021 painting/collage / a mouse in the car /  by Philip Tarlow

9/22/2021 painting/collage stage 3 at the end of my painting day today

2:49 PM: a good example of a painting in it’s becoming state. I really love the whimsicality and fluidity of this stage. tomorrow will be a critical day, assuming I have the juice to paint after our morning trail walk, which I usually do. i’m stopping a bit early for the day, both because my fresh morning energy is gone and because it’s Thursday; the day our friends Suzanne & Kent are at the kiosk in town with their big truck full of fruits & veggies. so from here i’ll be driving to the kiosk to get some delicious fresh organic produce, fresh from the farm.

DETAIL

12:43 PM: this morning I continued to develop 9/22/2021 painting/collage, adding some of my dancing, jumping figures. as the day progresses, i’ll post the latest versions.

forgot to mention that, 2 days ago while driving to town, I felt something on my calf. part of me knew what it was, but I remained in denial until I saw the little guy: a small mouse scurrying about the inside of our suv. almost drove off the road at one point, but finally got it when I returned home. no idea how he got in.

starting 9/22/2021 painting/collage /  by Philip Tarlow

9/22/2021 painting/collage at the end of my painting day today.

4:03 PM: I progressed a bit on 9/22/2021 painting/collage. still lots of beautiful white space, and a purple shadow of myself painting, on the right.

as well, I made modifications to the small (9 1/4 x 11 1/4”) 9/20/2021 watercolor/collage. it has become rather festive, with a band of collaged colored paper from a magazine framing it, and the, by now, familiar checkered shorts. something toulouse about it. but, rather than the figures being set in a cabaret, they are ecstatically dancing at the final celebration of the tokyo olympics.

we took our trail walk somewhat later than usual this morning, and the temperature was only about 38F. so I got a later than normal start, and spent a good part of my late morning handling logistics for construction of my imminent new studio space, which may start as early as next week!

STAGE 1 of 9/22/2021 painting/collage 42x54” on french extra fine portrait linen

2:54 PM: there’s nothing quite like a freshly stretched white portrait linen canvas. I stretched one yesterday which is a different size and shape than the ones i’ve been using for the past couple of months; it’s 42x54 in.

I started drawing and collaging a few hours ago and am now on a break. what you see here is a very early stage. I haven’t used oil paint yet; just oil pastels and crayons, with one piece of map collaged on.

i’ll continue for about another hour before stopping for the day, and post updates when available.

stretching a new 54x42 inch canvas /  by Philip Tarlow

7:08 pm: i didn’t do any painting today. i had a mid-morning appointment in moffat to remove a splinter in my finger tip from handling stretcher bars. i tried unsuccesfully to get it out myself with no luck, and it was getting worse. she got it out in about a minute.

but that did interrupt my rhythm, so i decided it would be better to spend the remaining time in my studio stretching a new canvas. i was getting a little tired of the 26x62” format i’ve been using the past few months. so iswitched to a rectangle: 54 x 42 in.

BELOW: on the left, the newly stretched 42 x 54” portrait linen beneath the 26x78” painting i completed yesterday. and on the right, the stretching table with my tools:stretching pliars, staple gun, etc.

in just a week, my studio will have a new 10x18 ft. storage space, which will be accessed from a wide door cut into my south facing studio wall.

this will allow me to empty the studio of the piles of completed canavses, some stretched, some unstretched and rolled, as well as the many stretcher bars taking up lots of space. very exciting!

this is where the new 18x10 ft. storage space will be built next week.

continued modifications of 6/10/2021 painting/collage & a new watercolor/collage /  by Philip Tarlow

4:30 PM: just before walking out the door, I collaged a piece of a cut up drawing to the right of the redhead.

continued updates to 6/10/2021 painting/collage, with the main area of modification on the right

3:26 PM: revisions on the right quadrant: I worked/played exclusively on the red headed paddler on the right quadrant of the composition. the black band running across the top of the composition has been broken up with a collaged page form a vermeer catalogue. thus, the red lettering we see on the upper left is now repeated next to the red head, while vermeer’s “the love letter” can be seen turned on it’s side in the very upper right corner. ecstatic tokyo olympics dancers mingle with a colorado paddler and a vermeer masterpiece.

our experience of space/time is rapidly coming full circle. where, loren mcIntyre, asked cambio in one of my favorite books: amazon beaming, are we going? where is the beginning of time? HERE!, said he. loren has just begun experiencing the non-verbal communication practiced by the mayoruna. he suggests that this was how communication happened before “civilization” entered the picture.

I like to imagine that the discreet events and persons who are players in this painting are swimming in a sea of now.

of course first and foremost, always, this is a painting: marks on a 2 dimensional surface creating a play of forms and color in space.

2:06 PM: didn’t sleep too well & wasn’t sure i could get anything done. but, here I am!

i’m modifying the red haired paddler on the right & took a break to make this 9x11” watercolor/collage on paper. the figures are familiar: the tokyo olympics dancers.

continued modifications to 6/10/2021 painting/collage

continued modifications of 6/10/2021 painting /collage /  by Philip Tarlow

9/10/2021 painting/collage at the end of my painting day

3:54 PM: so here’s where we’re at at the end of my painting day. a 3rd and 4th figure have begun to take form, including a river paddler, and shadows have shown up beneath their feet, adding vibrance to the composition and richness for the eye to take in.

DETAIL

1:51 PM: as I suggested yesterday, figures have begun to appear in this painting. they are from a selection of photos mostly of the final celebration for the tokyo olympics, with figures in colorful costumes dancing joyfully and energetically. as yet to be introduced is one of the two river paddlers I photographed some years ago from a bridge overlooking the river in alamosa, co.

this addition of figures brings the painting more into alignment with it’s brothers & sisters in the series, which you can see in the drop down menu in the upper right corner of this page , under SERIES, then click on RECENT WORK.

i’m continuing these modifications on this very windy, pleasantly cool afternoon in the baca grande. will post updates as they occur.

modifying 6/10/2021 creek oil/collage /  by Philip Tarlow

4:25 PM: upon further reflection, i think what i may do tomorrow is to create a couple of figures painted on paper, probably the dancing figures from the final celebration at the tokyo olympics, and try them out in this painting, moving them about until they work compositionally. then i’ll collage the one or two i choose, bringing 6/10/2021 creek oil/collage more in alignment with the rest of the series.

6/10/2021 creek oil/collage 26 x 78” as it looked moments ago, as a horizontal rather than a vertical compositiona

6/10/2021 creek oil/collage on 9/14/21, as a vertical

2:04 PM: with a little bit of extra effort, it did work to collage onto the painting without the plywood underneath to press into. there were a few expected wavy bits, where the paper hadn’t adhered to the surface, but I was able to smooth those out pretty easily.

I had never been completely satisfied with that walking figure viewed from above, with his black top and scruffy hair. so I collaged over most of him. admittedly, I took a kind of childish delight in disappearing such a pivotal, central figure in the composition. but, truth be told, I much prefer this painting in it’s current state, as a horizontal. it now, I believe, finally works as a coherent composition. can it be called an abstracted figurative painting any longer? well, no. but I do believe it belongs in this current series of paintings, which is more about the flexibility of time itself than any of the figures most of the paintings do exhibit. so it’s kind of perfect that what were once legs now call to mind fish more than they do legs. and that my old buddy vermeer has once again wormed his way into the composition. this may be my most successful transformation of a painting.

matisse, always my role model & measuring stick, would likely have appreciated this composition far more readily than the previous state. he would have appreciated both the relationship of forms in space. and, although not part of his immediate reality, the juggling of space/time in a painterly, playful way.

12:08 PM: after having lived with this painting for over a month, hanging at the top of our stairs in the house, it became obvious to us both that the upper 2/3 needed simplification big time. so here you see me working on cutting up some drawings and newspaper articles to collage onto that portion of the painting.

the only problem is, I removed the underlying piece of plywood, which makes collaging so much easier, and to put it back would take too long. so let’s see if I can collage without it. i’ll know right away. stay tuned!

cutting paper moments ago to be collaged onto the upper portion of the painting

final tweaks to 9/10/2021 painting/collage and updates to 6/10/2021 creek oil /  by Philip Tarlow

12:53 PM: so here are the two minor tweaks I made to 9/10/2021 painting/collage. I explain what’s going on in the paragraph I wrote below.

if you look at the two versions BELOW, notice how, in the passage above the dancing girl on the left, the black edge of the collaged newspaper makes a straight line, and in the tweaked version that line is softened by bringing the reddish color over it. and in the second area on the upper right, something similar has taken place on the pink bit of collaged newspaper with the cut off word sotheby's; the sharp edge of the collaged paper has been softened on both the right and the left, integrating it more into the composition. likewise with the edges of the collaged piece which has the name jason brooks.

after the tweaks

yesterday’s version, before the tweaks

11:30 AM: today i’ll be making some final tweaks to the one i’ve been working on for the past week: 9/10/2021 painting/collage . I may make some changes to 6/10/2021 creek oil as well. it’s been hanging in our house for the past few months, and the upper portions need work. here I am this morning with both of them.

6:31 PM: here’s a painting from 2017 titled lucien, which was then painted over. just discovered it in my files. you can see the signs of things to come. looking at it now, it’s not a bad painting. i may borrow a few things from it in my next painting, which i may prepare for tomorrow.