continuing work on canvas 19 / February 27, 2022 by Philip Tarlow

*canvas 19* as it looked at the end of my painting day today

2 pm: I did quite a bit more work on canvas 19, and that’s about all i’m going to do today.

eliminating the blue checkerboard patterning on the top helped the entire composition a lot, I would say. I also added a few more drums as well as simplifying the area surrounding the drummer’s head.

12:16 PM: after scraping over the painting yesterday afternoon, I came in to my studio this morning licking my lips. it’s tempting to go online and find out the latest developments in Ukraine, but mikela is on top of it, and if anything important breaks, she’ll call.

so I introduced an entirely new figure into the composition: a drummer photographed from above. I think he’s part of the tokyo olympics celebration, but if he’s not, I just made him. I love the round forms of the drums seen from above, and how they contrast with the tokyo olympics celebration figures pushing those big colored rectangular boxes around!

so it’s shaping up, and I think I have about another 2 hours in me. i’m going to continue painting and will post again when i’m done for the day. the mauve shadows on the bottom help to create continuity & coherence to the lower portion of the painting. it’s helpful to the reproduction you see, if you compare it with the one of the earlier stage, below, that I remembered to turn on the raw setting on my phone, which allows the colors to be a lot truer. i’ve begun using my i-phone 13 more than my nikon because it actually give me better results!

starting canvas 19 / February 26, 2022 by Philip Tarlow

*canvas 19* following a 4:40 pm scraping

5:15 PM: i returned to the studio briefly at 4:30. i scraped the still fresh paint, so that it now looks like what you see ABOVE. that sets it up for tomorrow morning, when i’ll work back into it.

i love workng back into a surface like this. love it! why? in one system of identifying personality types, i fall into the “random abstract” group. so the suface created after scraping over what i’ve done today, the unintended, unpredictable marks and blending of colors awaken my random abstract nature.

in 2 short minutes, a bike rider taking a spill morphs into suggestive biomorphic shapes. the surface has come alive!

*canvas 19* stage 3, as it looked moments ago

3:46 PM: i’m done for the day. I took it a lot further, but I think it still needs work. the biker flying off his upside down bike is too dominant and needs to be more integrated into the whole. it looks better in person, from about 20 feet away, than on the screen; some paintings are like that. lets see how I feel about it in the morning.

2:46 PM: I made the first marks today on this next painting in my polyptych series: canvas 19. here are the first two stages. i’m still working, so i’ll post more later in the afternoon. all i’ll say right now is that the central (and only) figure is a tokyo olympics competition bicyclist flying off his bike, upside down.

BELOW: stages 1 & 2

declaring canvas 17 complete & starting canvas 18 / February 25, 2022 by Philip Tarlow

*canvas 18* at the en dof my painting day today

BELOW: canvas 18, 4 stages of development

1:10 PM: yesterday afternoon I did lots of work on canvas 17 & figured i’d pick up where I left off today. but when I gave it my first glance, it seemed resolved, so I moved on to canvas 18. I feel like a locomotive roaring down the tracks. I can’t stop, so watch out! this one has started out as a realist depiction of celebrating musicians/dancers, once again at the 2020 tokyo olympics celebration.

it’s a great example of ontogeny, or “the process of development from a single cell, an egg or a zygote, to an adult organism.” so this would represent the single cell in my current process of developing a painting. phylogeny, in biology, is the history of the evolution of a species or group. so my daily blog could be thought of along these lines. but the species, in this case the painting, develops in unpredictable ways. now, of course you could say it’s somewhat predictable, based on what has preceded it; in this case the 17 previous paintings in this ongoing series.

following a conversation this morning with mikela, i’ve decided to consciously do that with this painting, more closely and carefully than with previous iterations in this polyptych suite. so stay tuned and let’s see what the next stage looks like.

FINAL strokes on CANVAS 16, 15X17” / STARTING CANVAS 17 / February 24, 2022 by Philip Tarlow

*canvas 17* in my polyptych suite of paintings

4:16 PM: I started canvas 17 this afternoon feeling continued inspiration form the visual of the 2020 tokyo olympics final celebration. we didn’t attend the event, but what I saw on tv was so over the top beautiful, I became kind of obsessed with it. I major element in that excitement was the work of the designers who created the costumes, the back drop and all the elements that played a role. the whole thing had a painterly flair

12:42 PM: still windy & very cold, but the skies are clearing & the natural painting light is good. thank god for my big north windows!

I started work on canvas 17 of my polyptych suite, but realized as I was starting to work on the new one that canvas 16 needed more. I think what I did is a vast improvement and says a lot about persisting with something you’re working on till it signals you “i’m complete.” throughout the history of art, that moment has been a fugitive and highly treasured one. how did van gogh know, or matisse, or diebenkorn when a painting or drawing was complete? even the great masters sometimes got it wrong. if you visit the van gogh museum in Amsterdam, you’ll find an entire floor devoted to less successful or outright unsuccessful paintings he made over the course of his career, many of which are either under or over-worked.

BELOW: yesterdays version on the left, and how the painting looked moments ago, on the right.

notice: the chest and head of the basketball player in the center have been filled in, clearing up the confusion the viewer may have had about that figure in yesterdays version. likewise with the basketball player in the center. the jacket of guy on the left holding the jump rope now has a blue-green color, which is nicely set off by his red shorts. and I think, despite all the previously while spaces that have been filled in, there are still enough to allow this painting to breathe.

so i’m going to leave it for now & go back to the new CANVAS 17.

more later….

continued work on CANVAS 16, 15X17” / February 23, 2022 by Philip Tarlow

1:18 PM: it’s a cloudy, windy day with high winds, falling temperatures and snow in the forecast for later this afternoon & tonight. I spent this morning and early afternoon taking CANVAS 16, 15X17” to the next stage.

I collaged one small piece of a cut up drawing, filled in several of the outlined figures and made some changes to the checkerboard background, in eluding the colored pencil marks you see above the dancer with the red arm. the checkered pants of the dancer on the lower right echo the blue checkered background and the socks of the dancer on the left.

rearranging paintings on my studio wall / starting canvas 16 / ever seen me in a tie? / February 22, 2022 by Philip Tarlow

shooting video at an even a few years back

*CANVAS 16,* 15X17”, as it looked moments ago

2:42 PM: I didn’t have a great sleep, so I didn’t think i’d get anything done today. but I did! first I rearranged the paintings on my studio wall, making room for the one I completed yesterday.

then I took two of the 15x17” canvases, tacked them to the east wall and started work on CANVAS 16. i’ve learned a lot from the previous 15, and so far haven’t felt the need to employ collage at all. i’m cooked, and ready to go back to the house & pick it up again in the morning, when, hopefully, i’ll have more energy.

BELOW: paintings I rearranged this morning on my south wall, to make room for ˆ2/18/2022 oil painting, which I completed yesterday. it’s on the lower right of the photo on the right, below

the next stage of 2/18/2022 oil/collage / sunset photos / February 21, 2022 by Philip Tarlow

*2/18/2022 oil/collage* at the end of my painting day today

I had a long day today. I got to the studio before 9am, because mikela had to leave the house for school at 8 and I wanted to complete my shower & stuff so we could have our usual phone conversation as she was driving. it works great; I learn what she’ll be up to at school, and the time flies so that before we know it she’s arrived and i’m able to leave the house very early.

as a result, I was able to do more work than I had anticipated on 2/18/2022 oil/collage. thus, it’s in a very different place than yesterday. i’ve posted side by side images BELOW for you to observe the changes.

BELOW: 5 progressive stage of this evenings sunset as photographed from our west living room windows

continued work on 2/18/2022 oil/collage / February 20, 2022 by Philip Tarlow

at work this morning on *2/18/2022 oil/collage*

12:14 PM: this morning I had my groove on, so I painted as long as it lasted and, as i’ve learned over time, when my logical (?) mind cut in, I stopped & started this post. my mentee will arrive in about 45 minutes, so i’d have to stop then anyway.

creek-scape and olympic dancers come together, and the mystery thickens. this one will definitely be in my april denver show, if I can pull it off. i’ll have to wait till tomorrow morning to continue.

*2/18/2022 oil/collage* as it looked at noon today

OUT, damn shadows! / a 1978 article about my portraits of contemporary greek painters / starting 2/18/2022 oil/collage / February 19, 2022 by Philip Tarlow

3:45 pm I decided to take a short break from the smaller canvasses and start a new larger one, which is 28x60.” i’m starting with a drawing based upon some of my creek photos, and we’ll see where it wants to go tomorrow.

12:57 PM: upon entering my studio and casting my all-important first glance, I determined that those purple shadows at the bottom, which were added at the last minute yesterday, were distracting from the whole composition, and unnecessary. so this morning I took them out, at first by painting over them with white, and then by rubbing them out using a gamsol-soaked rag.

if you compare the BEFORE and AFTER, ABOVE, you’ll likely see what i’m talking about.

in 1978, which was my final year of the 15 consecutive years I lived and painted in greece, my friend ralli kopsidis wrote a short article about me and the series of 5 portraits I had just completed, of contemporary greek painters & friends of mine. it was published in zygos, an art magazine. I re-discovered it while browsing through my bookshelf, and thought you’d enjoy seeing it. when I have a moment, i’ll translate it and post. might be a few days…

taking canvas 15 to the next stage / February 18, 2022 by Philip Tarlow

2:20 PM: this is close to the end of my painting day, if not the actual end, since we’re taking our stupa walk in just under an hour. I did extensive work on canvas 15, which I started yesterday. stage 1 is no longer visible in the flurry of strokes and the newly collaged elements. it’s not as spare as some of the others in the polyptych suite, but just as engaging, I believe, especially when you get up close. the tokyo olympics final celebration continues to be the thread that runs through them all, but the dancers and acrobats are not as evident. the collaged bits of ink drawings always introduce that element of chance I so love, and create a delicious ambiguity.

the figures in white moving the large colored cubes about are there, as is the checkerboard background and the checkered pant leg of one of the dancers. but if you haven’t seen the rest of the series, you might not get what’s going on here. so when I show this suite in april, the 20 or more canvases will be distributed on the wall in a decorative pattern, perhaps echoing the checkerboard patterning that permeates all the individual compositions.

will I do more tomorrow morning? don’t know yet.