10/30/2021 plein air oil 6x17” oil & colored pencil on portrait linen
3:25 PM: with this continued great weather, I went back out to the creek this afternoon. it’s only about 17 minutes but it’s up a very rocky road, and when I arrived I discovered I had taken the wrong bag! so I had to come back and go back up again.
this is, of course, very different in look and feel from the watercolor I made yesterday, although it’s the same composition more or less.
10/29/21 plein air watercolor
4:05 PM: it was a warm day, with a high of 58F. so i went out to one of our nearby creeks with my materials and made a colored pencil drawing followed by a watercolor. as always, i documented everything. as i was returning to my little collapsable stool after setting up my phone to shoot myself as i painted, i didn’t see a sharp, cut off branch at head hight & slammed into it. i fell to the ground & blacked out for a moment.
but i’m so glad i went out, and if it’s this nice tomorrow i may go back. first i made a colored pencil drawing in one of my sketchbooks, then i got out my paints & brushes and made a watercolor.
the creek at about 3pm this afternoon
about an hour before sunset i photographed this light falling on a recent painting hanging on our stairs.
7:00 pm: we were in denver/boulder the past 2 days for medical appointments and an important meeting at space gallery, where we settled on a tentative date of april 14 for the exhibition and sale of my paintings as a benefit for anschutz eye center. i have tremendous gratitude for the superb care mikela and i have received and want to give back.
on april 14, my paintings will fill the walls of space gallery. and, once we confirm that april 14 dat e, invitations will go out to denver art lovers. anschutz eye surgeons and specialists will be amongst the attendees, as wellas many friends. an area of the gallery space will be devoted to kids paintings & drawings, and i’ll be giving a talk about my work and how the anschutz team has affected it.
as always, while sitting in the anschutz eye center waiting room this morning, i made a few drawings. i never know how long my subjects will be sitting and unwittingly posing for me before they are ushered in for their appointments. as a result, some are unfinished; a look i actually love!
9/4/2021 painting/collage 26x62”
11:25 AM: from september 4-10, I created 9/4/2021 painting/collage. as always, I documented my process. if you were to go back and look at my blog posts during that period, you would see the stages of development.
but today, on this cloudy, rainy, windy day in october, I decided to post images of stages in the entire process of development.
it all began with the leaves you see in the first photo. they were observed & photographed on one of our august/september trail walks up the creek. the dancing figure with the checkered shorts is from a photo I shot from our tv screen of the lively celebrations at the end of the tokyo olympics, as are the dancing male figure with the blue top and, on the far right, the woman with the pony tail.
locating them in the midst of the foliage sets them apart from the specifics of the olympic games and catapults them into a fantasy world of lush leaves. I attach no meaning to this, other than the joy and enthusiasm reflected in their movements. all this simply served as vehicles for my delight in moving my brush over the canvas and playing with space.
DETAIL
3:26 PM: today I worked on my artists statement for my application to become a member of a gallery that interests me. in the process, I reviewed a variety of past work & got ideas for next steps, as soon as I can get back to work, probably next week.
BELOW are some of my past works the caught my attention.
10/24/21 creek drawing
5:44 PM: we took our creek walk a few hours ago, and i made this drawing at a rock we stopped at next to the creek.
1:19 PM: sometime next week, once my storage room is complete, my studio will begin to return to normal, but with a lot more space. in the mean time, I have plenty of logistical stuff to get done, but I always like to start the day with a drawing. so I set up my folding plain air table in the midst of the chaos that is currently my studio interior, and made a drawing of my tool drawer; a favorite subject for pen & ink drawings, as I love the shapes of those tools!
we’ll be walking up the trail about 3pm, so I have an hour & a half to delve into stuff I need to take care of, which i’m about to do.
3 days ago was the last day the temporary construction crew was working before my trusted guy comes back on Monday from an unexpected trip he had to take. they cut the hole for the door leading to the studio on the outside wall, but left the inside wall opening until the structure is completely walled & sealed, so mice can’t get in. in the mean time, I poured a bunch of moth balls at the base of that opening to keep the mice away till they can close the structure in. bad idea. my studio reeked of mothballs! so I swept them away & am using baking powder to absorb the odors.
making a drawing a few moments ago
drawing in the midst of chaos
2:47 PM: at this point, i’m counting the days until the 10x20’ storage space addition to my studio is completed and ready. i will start moving stuff in that very day, and start painting again the following day. i was in the studio this morning and took this shot of my painting table, awaiting my return.
after having had almost a week to study 9/22/2021 painting/collage, 42 x 54 in., currently hanging in our west facing living room, i’ve concluded, and mikela agrees, that this painting is not resolved. so once i get back to work, this is likely where i’ll begin.
BELOW, you see the painting in it’s current state. while the tennis player in the red shirt is an interesting figure, it doesn’t integrate well into the composition as a whole. if you put your finger over her, you’ll see what i’m getting at. and the central paddler figure needs to pop more.
we’ll see what happens in a week or so.
3:10 PM: while having my breakfast, i generally browse one or moe of my books. today it was the sketchbooks of picasso. this is a drawing he made in 1962, when he was 81. the livliness of his marks is more pronounced than ever. his compositional brilliance boggles the mind. it’s so revealing to look at these drawings/sketches
and when you look at the six month progression of this 1945 painting, BELOW, you get a better sense of his process; what he kept, what he let go of and how much of the open, white space he chose to keep.
6:07 PM: this 2012 painting/collage may be one of my most successful in this range of work. it hangs in our master bathroom, where it can be viewed from the bedroom.
a female torso? not my intention, but it does read as such.
you can’t hide your signature marks. they are present everywhere, always.
can you spot those marks in this detail of an ‘80’s portrait and in this 2012 painting/collage?
consider this next time you’re in a museum.
ABOVE left: this is an example of one of my gaze series paintings in progress. the series was inspired by my lifelong love affair with vermeer and 1st century fayum portraits. what you see in this photo had been painted and collaged over, and this is the only record of it. looking back at it, i can see very compelling visual elements, bringing up the eternal question: when is it time to stop & leave it be?
and on the right, i’m standing in front of a just completed gaze painting in my studio, on june 19, 2016.
2:19 PM: i have about one more week to spend doing things other than actually making paintings. that’s when construction of the 10x20 ft. storage space addition to my studio. today the last of the lumber materials were delivered, placed at the construction site and covered with a protective tarp.
i’ve been taking care of outstanding lostical tasks and reviewing past work to see where i’ve been and how this may be an indication of where i’ll be going over the coming winter months.
here’s a glimpse of my 2016 gaze period work. copy & paste the link below to this page of my site to view the series:
https://www.philiptarlow.com/gaze
BELOW: one of my 2001 creek series paintings in a houston private collection
6:57 PM: mikela had meetings at the monte vista high school today and i went along. i sat in a coffee shop & made a couple of drawings. haven’t been able to do that in a while, and it felt good. there’s something about people sitting around eating, drinking and having lively conversations that makes me want to draw them. today i was able to make 2 before leaving to pick mikela up.
