tools I've known /  by Philip Tarlow

12:48 PM: I did more on 10/15/2021 tools i’ve known 1, adding blue and filling in the canvas on the right with a hammer shape.

here, above the 3 canvases on the table, you can discern my tool drawer, which I was looking at as I made these marks.

I have more of these 16x16” blank stretched canvasses, and i’m about to take a look & see if I can find three more to paint on. i’m awaiting a delivery of more 26x62” stretcher bars in a week or so, so that I can continue the series, and this is what I may be doing in the meantime.

in a couple of hours, mikela and I will venture up the trail for the first time in more than 2 weeks. we’re both out of shape, and i’m still recovering from the after effects of our modern booster 3 days ago, so we’ll see how far we get.

10/15/2021 tools i’ve known 1 16x48” on 3 16x16” canvases

11:47 AM: I felt the need for something simple. tired of layering & scraping, I took 3 already stretched canvases, 2 white and 1 with a tan ground, placed them together on my painting table and made a drawing.

as i’ve done with my pen & ink drawings on paper, which I then cut into pieces and used for collages, I looked into my open tool drawer and began drawing, using 2 oil brushes and 2 small containers; one with a warm grey, the other with sennelier rouge coral hélios, with some gamsol turp substitute & a little neo megilp medium. this is where it’s at so far.

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

9/22/2021 painting/collage at 2:30pm

2:26 PM: the rectangular collaged newspaper in the upper right corner kept grabbing my eye; a sign that it needed modification. so I added a piece of on of my cut up ink drawings & worked into that with blue oil sticks. if you compare this with the previous state in my 12:04 post, BELOW, I think you’ll agree that the issue was successfully resolved. I especially love what happened when the collages drawing entered the back of the tennis player in red. I went into the white paper with an oil stick, creating a new shape and a slightly different red, enriching the composition and integrating her body even more into the whole.

9/22/2021 painting/collage after my modifications today

12:04 PM: work continues on 9/22/2021 painting/collage today i’m still in my morning fresh energy, so I won’t say much yet. you can compare yesterdays version with how it looks at the moment BELOW. yesterdays is on the left.

continuing improvements to 9/22/2021 painting/collage /  by Philip Tarlow

9/22/2021 painting/collage at 2pm, following modifications you can read about in my 2:01 post, below

2:01 PM: I made significant modifications to 9/22/2021 painting/collage in an unlikely atmosphere of hammering and periodically checking in with the tech guy who was trying to improve our crazy slow internet speeds.

I use the word significant because, if you compare the before and after, BELOW, you’ll notice that painting over the pink on the left has resulted in a far more coherent composition, which was my intention today. the deepening of the shadow of the jumping skate boarder; the isolation of the upper body of the dancing girl on the left and the addition of a shadow beneath her legs and the addition of the falling tennis champion’s right arm….have all made it easier for your eye to traverse the surface of this painting without getting stuck. if you make the before and after images BELOW full page, then go back & forth between the two, you’ll likely see what I mean.

DETAIL

12:02 PM: amidst the hammering of the crew building my storage space and the fluctuations in our internet speed, which is being worked on as we speak, i’m going to launch into further modifications to 9/22/2021 painting/collage, which I think can improve greatly if i’m in the right space.

here’s what it currently looks like:

a drawing in salida / preparing for a drawing exhibition / my participation in the arvada art of the state 2022 juried exhibition /  by Philip Tarlow

6:32 PM: while mikela was in the saguache high school meeting with teachers, i went to the dentist in salida, 45 minutes away. i hadn’t eaten anything and it was noon, so i went to sweeties, a cool salida bakery/lunch restaurant, had a veggie sandwich & made a quick drawing of a guy eating lunch. i started drawing a different guy with a cowboy hat, but he got up. i decided to start the new drawing on top of the first one, and it kind of works.

i liked the patterning on his jacket, so i photographed it & may draw on those patterns in my next painting.

the dentist couldn’t get to the bottom of my molar pain, and gave me 3 options, one of which was to pull the tooth, which had a root canal a year ago & i’ve had pain ever since.

i’m going to spend time considering my less extreme options and then make my decision.

while we were away, we had snow in crestone, with temperatures hovering in the high 20’s. an ealy taste of winter is not unusual at this time of fall in crestone/baca.

7:01 AM: yesterday i submitted 3 recent paintings to the arvada art of the state 2022 juried exhibition, which takes place every 3 years. i’ll post them this afternoon.

as well, i’m reviewing my drawings done ove rthe past decade in preparation for an exhibition which is in the formative stage. more about this later today.

improvements to 9/22/2021 painting/collage / work begins on construction of my studio storage space /  by Philip Tarlow

9/22/2021 painting/collage at the end of my painting day today; to be continued Wednesday morning

4:23 PM: here’s the current state of the painting, after doing a bit more since my last post. can’t be in the studio tomorrow, so i’ll resume on wednesday.

9/22/2021 painting/collage at 2pm today

2:43 PM: this painting, which I created back in september, has been on the easel or on the wall in my studio since then. I look at it every day, and have the sense that it’s not resolved. it differs from the others in this series in that it’s rectangular in shape, rather than long & narrow. so it presents a very different set of compositional challenges. painting the others was a bit like working on a frieze. this shape is, in a way, more challenging. today I added the figure of the tennis champion at the moment she learns she’s won, falling to the ground. this pose is a few seconds earlier than the one i’ve used in 10/2/2021 painting/collage., where she’s actually on the ground. here, she’s in the process of falling. so her limbs are in different positions.

BELOW you see the two stages of the tennis champion’s fall; on the left, in today’s painting, she’s on her way down, and on the right, in 9/10/2021 painting/collage, she’s fallen to the ground.

continued modifications to the right portion of 10/2/2021 painting/collage /  by Philip Tarlow

10/2/2021 painting/collage at 4pm

4:07 PM: I was never a big fan of the juggler. so I ditched him! I struggled with that figure all day yesterday & today until finally at about 3pm, I said fuck this! you might say, yeah, but you were getting somewhere integrating him into the composition. but I just wasn’t loving that figure, so working on him seemed like a chore. know what I mean?

in his place, two familiar dancing figures, who have appeared in other paintings in this series. I love their red hats, her checkered shorts, their dancing moves….it’s still in process, so we’ll see what happens in the morning. we have an international Zoom with our German friends at noon, so i’ll have to work around that. see ya then!

10/2/2021 painting/collage as it looked moments ago

2:28 PM: I may be overworking the figure of the juggler. I need to get some new canvases stretched so that I can have a couple of things to switch back & forth on and not get too attached to one or the other.

that said, I do feel that the changes I made have improved the composition as a whole. the biggest shift was in the area surrounding the head and upper body of the juggler. the black magazine cutout collaged around his head allows that form to gain equal importance as the figure of the fallen tennis player on the left, allowing the central figure of the paddler to be more of a balance point.

in the comparative images BELOW, the eye gets a little lost and confused when looking at the right side of the composition. i’ve been going back & forth about that rose area to the left of the juggler’s head, but right this moment I do feel that the dark grey shape I replaced it with is a better solution.

morning light / studio storage room slab / changes to the right portion of 10/2/2021 painting/collage /  by Philip Tarlow

10/2/2021 painting/collage following my latest modifications to the juggler figure on the right

DETAIL of the juggler

3:09 PM: I did a bit more o the juggler figure on the right, bringing that reddish pink back down adjacent to his chest and giving his hands and arms more definition.

10/2/2021 painting/collage at noon today, following modifications to the figure of the juggler, on the right

12:52 PM: as I posted I might do today, I made improvements to the right portion of the composition in 10/2/2021 painting/collage. the juggler was not working, so I did some collaging of a cut up ink drawing on white paper, which I went over in some areas with oil pastel.

BELOW are the before (left) and after images. notice how, in the before image, the dark upside down vermeer cutout on the upper right dominates, and grabs your eye, taking away from the flow of the overall composition. the head and face of that figure on the right are now more defined, giving him more of a presence. the highest of the 3 balls he’s juggling is no longer visible; I found it too was taking away from the overall rhythm and flow of the composition. while I liked the green of his trousers, I found it a bit much, so it’s now interrupted by a piece of white collaged paper. and there’s more contrast between the blue behind his back and his red shirt. his blue stripped shirt pops less now, allowing it to merge more seamlessly with the rest of the forms and colors. all of these modifications have, I feel, made this a far more compelling painting.

DETAIL of the figure I modified today

10:30 AM: the studio storage room slab was poured yesterday, and the guys worked till 8:30 last night, using a flood light, to smooth it out. so today & tomorrow it will be drying out and next week constuction will begin. by next weekend, i’ll have a completed storage room, with 2 windowns looking south and a door connecting it to the main studio. as soon as it’s ready, i’ll begin transferring some of the more space hogging stacks of paintings (images BELOW), and my studio will breathe again!

9:18 AM: it’s a beautiful, clear morning. the tempreature has already risen to 50° F and i’m about to meditate in our living room, then head to the studio for more modificatiopns to 10/2/2021 painting/collage.

here, the morning light casts shadows on recent creek paintings in our entryway.

slab for storage room poured today /  by Philip Tarlow

5:32 PM: the concrete slab for the studio storage room was poured today, along with the slab in front of our house. next week, once the cement has thoroughly dried, construction will begin, and within2 weeks, it will be completed.

we had to go briefly to moffat, a 25 minute drive, mid-day, which broke up my day, and i didn’t get any painting done. but when i looked critically at 10/2/2021 painting/collage, i saw clearly that the right hand side needs work so it can integrate with the composition as a whole.. so that’s likely what i’ll do in the morning.

continuing 10/2/2021 painting/collage /  by Philip Tarlow

10/2/2021 painting/collage as it looked following todays modifications

2:09 PM: this morning was a pivotal moment for this painting, which may have found it’s sea legs about an hour ago. I surrounded the upper portion of the central figure in blue, vastly simplifying the composition and emphasizing the very interesting head of that figure. and on the right, a juggler has appeared. he was there, but only in outline form. as a result, everything snapped into place, and there’s not much more to do, although I may give the juggler a bit more definition tomorrow. a painting doesn’t sing until it does. and then, a beautiful melody can be heard, if you listen carefully. you have to go where it takes you, not where you think it should.

BELOW: before (left) and after today’s modifications

continuing 10/2/2021 painting/collage /  by Philip Tarlow

10/2/2021 painting/collage at 3pm, following extensive collaging

3:16 PM: I did a bit more….actually a lot more, mostly collaging. if you compare the 2pm image below with this one, you will likely find it somewhat easier to peruse, as well as discovering unplanned, unexpected relationships of the biomorphic forms that make up this composition. they are a result of how my hand holding the matte knife moves across the piece of paper I happen to be cutting; in swirling motions that engage my entire body. the body of the tokyo olympics dancer, now upside down and bare breasted, with her checkered shorts and red hat, trails off into a snake-like shape, meeting up with the head, which you may not yet have discovered, of yet another tokyo olympics dancer, with a blue striped shirt.

DETAIL of the upside down dancer

10/2/2021 painting/collage at 2pm flipped upside down again

2:08 PM: i’ve been painting & collaging 10/2/2021 painting/collage on and off since 11:30am. I flipped the painting 360 ° so it’s in it’s original state, and added the paddler figure, who seems to want to show up everywhere. especially in a long narrow shape like this, he can serve as an anchor, from which the eye can roam at will. not sure I have much more in me, so i’m going to take a fruit & yoghurt break; we have a ton of fruit from our denver trip & have to consume before it goes bad. the raspberries are already on the edge.

11:36 AM: i’m about to jump back in to 10/2/2021 painting/collage. it’s got something, but it also needs something. let’s see what that might be.

updates as they become available.