artist statement /  by Philip Tarlow

5:09 PM: today i began working on my artist statement, due by wednesday. i started out talking about the title i chose: jestur.i included this tadrart acacus, libya cave art painting of a giraffe. and i quoted picasso, who famously exclaimed “after altimira, all is decadence.” i m trying making the point that great art is one, and spans the ages. this painting of a giraffe could be in a contemporary new york gallery and many would believe it was done this year.

plein air photos /  by Philip Tarlow

6:08 PM: after locating the photos i spoke about and posted yesterday; all potential candidates for the poster. today i searched successfully for plein air painting photos. here’s some of what i found in my cloud files. they’re all shot during the fall months; most likely october, which, in terms of weather, is the ideal time for plein air painting. you can see that i’m dressed warmly for the invigorating fall temperatures in the upper ‘40’s/low ‘50’s.

so how, you might ask, did i shoot these photos since i was by myself? by setting my shutter to a 20 second delay and propping it up on a tree branch. after a few tries, i got the shots i wanted.

a selection of photographs for cmc aspen to use in creating a poster for the show /  by Philip Tarlow

5:49 PM: i have a deadline for getting this selection of photos in so that they have time to select the one or ones they will ultimately use for the poster. i’m not terribly organized, so there was a lot of hunting and searching through desktop folders in order to come up with these. i’ likely narrow them down to just five or six, which is what they requested. my next step will be to create an artists statement. i’ve done this for exhibitions in the past, but now i have a different perspective, which my new statement will reflect.

a selection of "gaze" series paintings for the aspen show /  by Philip Tarlow

this morning i selected 6 paintings from my 2014 series of vermeer & fayum inspired gaze series of paintings. they will be included in the cmc aspen exhibition. it should be pretty clear to you that the two on the upper right are inspired by 1st c. fayum portraits, whereas the rest were inspired by 17th c. vermeer portraits, such as the one below; vermeer’s most famous portrait which hangs in the mauritshuis, the the hague.

VERMEER: girl with a pearl earing, 1665

2 studies of 1st c. fayum portraits i made in the british museum in 1972. the museum director allowed me to sit in front of these two paintings with my oil paints while i made the studies.

preparing for aspen / a morning trail drawing /  by Philip Tarlow

4:46 PM: following our morning trail walk, which was spectacular, & my morning trail drawing, i got to work sorting through my gaze series paintings to make my selection of the ones that will be shown in aspen. here’s one of them: Gaze 12 38x38”, mixed media on canvas.

we’ve been stopping our walks further up the trail: 45 minutes rather than 30, which means we’re stopping at a spot where there’s no easy creek access. so instead of making creek drawings, i’m making rock drawings, like the one you see BELOW right. the vegetation is lush, as you can see below left, ND THE Lndscape is filled with beautiful fallen tree trunks in various stages of disintegration.

a better option for my "jestur" exhibition /  by Philip Tarlow

3:23 PM: been workin’ most of the day on this logo/invite. here’s the latest version:

11:16 AM: this morning i shot a new photo of myself with a different painting for the logo of my aspen cmc exhibition. i think it’s better in many respects: i prefer using this painting to the one i used yesterday with the drummer, i look better shaved, and i included my name in this one, moving the title down to the bottom of the image.

the new version of the exhibition logo i created yesterday

playing around with ideas for my aspen exhibition next month /  by Philip Tarlow

4:09 PM: i’ve tentatively settled on a title for my exhibition opening next month, which is jestur, obviously a play on the word gesture. one way of talking about painting and drawing is by using the phrase mark making. i like gesture because, across the ages, that’s what it’s all about. yes, it’s all marks on some kind of surface. but even more to the point, it’s about the movement of the fingers, the arm, the body in making those marks. whether precise, like dürer, or loose & sweeping, like dekooning, the marks are made up of gestures rooted in the gut.

i think i need to re-shoot myself clean shaven, but i also need to ponder this title and whether it works. what do you get when you see it?

tweaks to "dwell" 17x80" /  by Philip Tarlow

dwell 17x80” oil on linen as it looked at the end of my painting day

dwell 17x80” oil on linen, as it looked on july 25 after introducing the blue on upper left

2:25 pm: ever since i last worked on it, i’ve been gazing at dwell, 17x80.” the last time i did something to it was the day i impulsively lay it on my painting table and introduced the blue to the upper left quadrant.

today, after taking care of some adjustments to the stretcher bars on tokyo drummer, i moved aside everything on my east painting wall & hung dwell. it needed to pop more, but i hadn’t been sure where to begin. so i started with the figure on the upper right & the adjacent table & chairs. then i loved on to the figure on the lower left, who, seen from above, is slicing a loaf of bread. from there i picked up steam & made tweaks to the bowls of fruit on the long whiote table and to the daisies on the left. i’ll determine tomorrow morning whether more needs to be done. but right now, as i look at it from a distance of about 18 feet, it definitely pops more. i sure am glad i was bold enought to add that blue on the upper left; i had to be in an all or nothing mood, which i was that day.