6/19/22 tokyo drummer, day 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

3pm: i just took out everything below the drummer; it was too busy.

2:25PM: today i continued work on 6/19/2022 tokyo drummer, adding elements of creek-scape on the lower portion. the landscape, with aspens and bits of sky is being reflected in the water. the figure of the drummer has been taken to the next level, as well as the large drum itself. now that the second drumstick has been painted in, there’s no doubt as to what he’s up to, whereas yesterday it wasn’t totally clear.

much of the painting thusfar has been done using oil pastels, and i’m running out of some of my most used colors. so i’ll have to check out which colors i need & order them tomorrow. it’s pretty messy using those pastels, so i wear disposable gloves.

as i direct my gaze towars the painting now, from a distance of about 20 feet, i see that a few elements need to pop, so i’ll see if i can address that tomorrow morning when i’m fresh.

right now i need to clean up & get back to the house so that we can visit with friends who want to show us their progress on a new house they’re building.

a newly gifted matisse book gets me going / starting 6-19-22 tokyo drummer / peek at a corner of my studio /  by Philip Tarlow

1:51 PM: i sent my prayer to st. anthony to find at least .75” of precipitation by the end of the day today, which will get us out of extreme drought and almost back up to normal for this time of year. it will likely come in bursts, and one has just started as i write this.

today i broke through the gap in my ability to make new paintings and started 6-19-22 tokyo drummer, 78x32.” it’s being painted on a piece of a roll of primed linen i had gone over with a deep grey oil color many years ago. i have no idea what i ahd in mind when i did that, but i obviously was thinking of making a series of paintings with that dark grey ground underneath. well, at least a decade later, i’m doing exactly that! i can’t count the number of times i climbed the stairs to my studio loft, found this roll of canvas and did nothing with it. i simply wasn’t ready.

with the new 6-19-22 tokyo drummer earlier today

browsing through my newly gifted matisse book this morning, which gave me back my painting groove

10:11 AM: last week my dear friend dan gifted me a new matisse book: matisse; the early years in nice, 1916-1930. i was browsing through it this morning over coffee, when the spirit may have returned, followoing my dry spell, which always happens after the close of an exhibition. we’ll see where it leads today.

3:14 PM: as i browsed my wonderful new matisse book at the end of my painting day, i glanced towards the north side of my studio, at a vignette i found sweetly characteristic of my energy. on the left, a study i made years ago of 2 matisse drawings i love; below that, a couple of figures i have floating around the studio, which i placed in an intimate pose; to the right of them, a fayum post card, behind which is a ceramic piece made by my friend dan, behind which is a cracked ceramic vase and to the right a photo of myself painting plein air by the creek, shot about 10 years ago.

a corner of my studio

painting of the day /  by Philip Tarlow

3 designs for plate paintings, each 11”, gouache on paper, ca. 1990

12:30 PM: as my break from painting continues, i’m posting todays painting of the day, which are actually three small 11” designs for plates, in gouache on paper, probably done in about 1990, when i was collaborating with a ceramicist in palm beach. the two faces are a reflection of my 15 years in greece, the time spent in the studio of my friend and mentor, yannis tsarouchis and my study of the byzantine tradition.

as i gaze at them at a distance of about 20 feet, tacked to my east painting wall, they read remarkably well from a distance. i hadn’t considered including them in my september CMC ASPEN exhibition, but now that i look at them, the two faces would be an interesting compliment to the walls where my GAZE series paintings will hang.

SANGRES WITH CLOUDS / painting of the day /  by Philip Tarlow

sangres with clouds 1 32x38” oil on linen, date?

2:36 PM:i posted these 4 paintings of the sangres with clouds last week. three of them, including this one, are 32x38,” oil on linen. one has a date: 2001, i think this one & the other two without dates were painted more recently. if i do a bit of boring research, i could probably find an exact date. but my record keeping leaves something to be desired.

the reason i’m bringing this up today is that, ever since i discovered these in my newly constructed storage space, i’ve had the feeling that i might want to turn them into a limited edition series of prints. whomever i show them to seems to like them a lot, especially residents of our slv, (san luis valley). so i made an initial call to a well respected imaging company in denver and got the info i was looking for: how much would it cost & how long would it take? so i may very well have these prints avaiable for sale at my aspen cmc show. one copy of each would be framed under glass so people could see what they were purchasing. ihaven’t yet decided how many would be in each edition & what the dimensions would be. 20x30” seems the most likely. each limited edition print would be signed and numbered. so if, for example, i were to decide to do an edition of 100, you might get one that says 84/100 with my siignature in the lower corener.

by the way, the thunderstorms we’ve been hoping and waiting for just started. let’s hope we get more than a smattering. we’re on theedge of extreme drought, so boy do we need it!!

blue-green 7/18/19 colored pencil on archival paper, 12x20”

1:44 PM: i spent 2 hours this morning cleaning up, following one more ant infestation, this time in the master bath shower. they were everywhere when we went to take showers last night, but i was too tired to do what needed to be done, so i just sprayed them & took care of cleaning up the mess this morning.

pest control was out here spraying just this past tuesday, but it didn’t prevent them from barging in.

i’m in a dry spell with my work, following the close of my space gallery exhibition in denver. these post exhibition blahs have happened in the past, so i’m not really worried about it. instead of trying to paint (how can you try to paint?) i’ve been browsing through past works: in oil on canvas, gouache/watercolor on paper and pencil on paper. in part, this is in preparation for my septmeber 29 opening at cmc aspen.

so i decided to post whatever painting i come across that seems worthy of being seen by you, the visitors to my (almost) daily blog. this one seems to have a title: blue-green, for obvious reasons, and was done on 7/18/2019. was it done on site….is it a plein air piece? maybe. it has the spontaneity and dash of a plein air drawing, done in colored pencil. that branch thrusting it’s way up the center of the composition rules, announcing itself as the key element, as well as adding phallic undertones. the yellow marks towards the top help create balance, and the green strokes made with the side of a pencil create a wavy, creek inspired motion. if it happens to make it’s way into my cmc (colorado mountain college) show, it will be framed under glass and priced reasonably, as most works on paper are.

lower creekscape /  by Philip Tarlow

lower creekscape 12x40” oil and collage on portrait linen

4:16 PM: today i performed minor surgery on a painting i was working on last month. i reached a dead end, so i put it in the storage room. i discovered it this morning, tacked it to the wall and saw immediately that the lower portion was a complete painting in itself. so i found 12x40” stretcher bars, cut off the bottom 14 inches, allowing room for stretching, and re-stretched it. i’ll bring it over to the house & see how it hold up over there. i’m calling it lower creekscape.

6-14-22 oil 15 3/4 x 66" /  by Philip Tarlow

4:11 PM: i took the canvas i worked on before our weekend trip and started a new painting. thus far, there are three figures side by side: a mother and child in a beach chair and a juggler from the post-2020 tokyo olympics celebration. this may or may not be the first in a new series destined to be shown in my CMC ASPEN exhibition, opening at the end of september which, as one of the participants in our meeting yesterday said is “right around the corner.”

i’m still feeling my way along, & likely won’t have a clear direction for another week or so, although i can say with a fair amount of certainty that abstracted figures will play a big part in the new series.

DETAIL of 6-14-22 oil

two 2005 drawings /  by Philip Tarlow

5:29 PM: i discovered these two drawings, amongst many others, this morning in a drawing book from 2005. the first is a drawing of vincent. he was from ghana, and was my dad’s helper in the months before he died. vincent was a treasure. he gave my dad the love and care he needed as he approached his final days. this drawing was made just two weeks before roy tarlow’s passing.

in 2005 mikela and i took a trip to canyon de chelle. i made a series of drawings, of which this is one. a unique landscape, that inspired me profoundly.

looking at this drawing makes me want to return, this time with gouache or oil colors.

starting 6/8/22 oil /  by Philip Tarlow

6/8/22 oil as it looked at the end of my painting day today

4:10 PM: today i started work on the new 6/8/22 oil, which is 36x42” on portrait linen. as i said yesterday, it will likely be a fusion of 3 or 4 directions i’ve taken over the past few decades. what you see here is a cloud formation over the sangre de christo mountains. if you look carefully by clicking on the image and making it full page, you will see an under drawing of nadal seen from abobe, about to serve in the french open final match a few days ago.

it’s still up in the air….pardon the pun…whether or not i’ll be adding color to that drawing and including him in the composition. a lot is yet to come, so stay tuned!

our morning trail walk / cutting portrait linen for new work /  by Philip Tarlow

cutting 2 pieces of portrait linen this afternoon

4:41 PM: after much contemplation and head trips during our trail walk, i took the step, opened the 85” tube with 5yardsx84” of the finest french portrait linen and started out by cutting 2 pieces, which will give me 2 stretched canvases, each 36 x 42.” my feeling is that i want to integrate the 3 or 4 directions i’ve explored over the past decade or so. the new paintings will integrate skies; views of people from above, some of them french open tennis players, creek-scapes, possibly interiors….i can sort of see these paintings; they dance into my consciousness fleetingly ….they tumble about and give me brief windows into a world i don’t yet know but i do. all the images stored in my consciousness, the colors and forms, they slide swiftly into my physical body, travel down my arm into my hand and fingers holding a brush or palette knife.

i’m thinking i may work on unstretched canavs tacked to the wall, in part because i haven’t yet ordered the stretcher bars.

1:43 PM: we walked up the trail this morning at 10; 4 hours later than usual, so the temperature was on the edge of being comfortable at about 65F. as always what we observed as we walked was magical.

softening "anschutz from above 9" /  by Philip Tarlow

anschutz from above 9 following this mornings intervention

9:56 AM: first thing this morning, it became clear that anschutz from above 9 needed softening. the edges were tooo sharp & hard, so that the viewer’s eye kept bouncing from one too bright color to the next, not allowing the subtle pinks, yellows, blues & tans were getting lost. following this mornings changes, your eye travels naturally over the 16x20” surface. the white border also helps in the process.

on the RIGHT: how the painting looked yesterday, before the changes I made this morning.

anschutz from above 9 as it looked yesterday