March 3, 2022 by Philip Tarlow

*2/28/22 oil/collage*.following this morning’s fine tuning

10:51 AM: this morning i used my fresh morning energy to fine tune 2/28/22 oil/collage. i placed more highlights in the outfit of the dancer on the left, as well as on the body of the paddler & his outfit. gazing at it now from about 20-25 feet, it’s made a significant difference, so that the whole composition now pops. and finally, i collaged a blue piece of map onto the bottom-center of the composition, beneath the dancer’s lifted leg, which eliminated a lot of unnessary clutter and connected with the other collaged map to his left. i’m seeing now that the central yellow paddle is key to the entire composition, as is what’s left of the sky i briefly introduced yesterday morning. looks resolved to me!

BELOW: left: yesterday’s version and right: following this morning’s tweaks

2/28/22 oil/collage: upside down / March 2, 2022 by Philip Tarlow

3:04 PM: over the past hour, I worked primarily on the figure of the paddler with the red hair. if you compare with the image in my previous post, BELOW, you will notice more highlights, with the sun falling on his arms & legs, and the lights and shadows in his hair more pronounced, with the dark blue of the water now surrounding his left arm, which has moved closer in to his body. his shorts have more definition, with dark lines indicating pockets.the pink of his t-shirt pops more. as well, the dark blue water now shows up below, and completely surrounds his skiff. what remains of the earlier version adds mystery to the composition; the bit of map on the lower left, the bits of tree branches and the sky I painted in earlier today. it might not be obvious at first, but the dancer on the left is kicking up one foot.

ABOVE: details of the modifications I made at the end of my painting day, to the figure of the paddler

*2/28/2022 oil/collage* with a second figure, moments ago

1:53 PM: a second figure has entered the composition, inspired by a photo I shot a few years ago on a bridge in alamosa, where a couple of guys were paddling their skiffs on the river.

12:19 PM: ABOVE is a photo showing the current state of 2/28/22 oil/collage

*2/28/22 oil/collage* as it looked moments ago

11:26 AM: I flipped it 360° and made a sky on top. lets see where she goes now…

morning energy / March 1, 2022 by Philip Tarlow

*2/28/22 oil/collage* as it looked moments ago, at the end of my painting day.

2:07 PM: i’ve been painting on this one pretty consistently since 10am. I had it on my painting table upside down for a while, when my energy was freshest. during that period of about an hour, I was in my flow state, following my instincts. I introduced a few critical collaged pieces, including a small torn up piece of a hockney poster he once sent me. it’s kind of an inside joke, where i’m acknowledging him while at the same time using just tiny a sliver of his mark making.

the creek-scape has integrated with several dancing tokyo olympics figures seamlessly so that neither of them jump out. looking at the polyptych suite of 19 paintings on the wall adjacent to the new painting i’m working on, a language is clearly emerging; of forms, colors & compositions. I learn from each successive painting, and in this one I’ve been able to take what I learned a step further. it’s neither too crowded nor too sparse. it peaks your curiosity, especially if you move up close and begin noticing the two figures. as always, i’ll know in the morning whether it’s asking for more.

I received yet another pair of walking/hiking shoes today, in a series i’ve ordered & returned using amazon’s try before you buy policy. I was able to wear this pair, which are more boots than shoes, made by columbia, all day on my unforgiving cement floor with no pain. so it’s a first, and may mean they are keepers!

it’s a gorgeous day, with a near record high temperature of 54F. we’ll be walking up the trail in 45 minutes, so i’m stopping here for the day.

11:42: i’m taking advantage of my morning fresh energy to take this one further. here she is so far.

starting 29x40 un-named / liang kai / February 28, 2022 by Philip Tarlow

DETAIL of the new 19x40” painting i started today.

1:34 PM: I started a new 19x40” painting on super fine portrait linen. on the right, shot with my iPhone 13; on the left, shot with my Nikon 7200

10:49 AM: “Liáng Kǎi; c. 1140 - c. 1210) was a Chinese painter of the Southern Song Dynasty. He was also known as Madman Liang because of his very informal pictures.”

from Wikipedia:”…Liang Kai is most famous for originating or developing the "Xie Yi" (sometimes translated as "sketch style") of painting, where the objective is to evoke the subject or atmosphere with minimal use of detail; it requires a profound mastery of painting technique and perfect concentration, but also allows for the beauty of accidental effects”

i’m a big fan. I’ve been studying this book on and off for at least a decade. this is a study I made a few years ago in ink on paper. it’s tacked to one of my studio closets in a spot where I can see it every day as I work.

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