starting swirling creek II /  by Philip Tarlow

3:46 PM: swirling creek II has gone through a number of stages today. BELOW are two of those stages, 2:20pm on the left and 3:34 on the right.; more to follow on my next day in the studio, which should be saturday, if i feel up to it. i’m having a molar extracted by my dentist tomorrow morning, and it takes a few days for the initial discomfort to subside. we’re hoping that alleviates the gum infection surrounding that tooth, which had a root canal 2 years ago & has been painful ever since.

but if i feel strongly about continuing work on this one, i may just take a few tylenol & get back to work saturday morning!

by the way, the bit of blue sky on the upper left is a collaged bit of a map. i’ve had difficulty collaging paper onto still wet (or dry for that matter) oil paint, so today i tried something new, using my neo megilp oil painting medium. it’ll take a while to fully dry,and we’ll see if it works in a few days or so.

1:27 PM: i started work on another 17x21” canvas today, painting over a previous one. it’s titled swirling creek II. i’ll post updates throughout the afternoon.

looking back to april, 2022 /  by Philip Tarlow

last april i showed paintings from my i fly series at space gallery in denver. this is one of the paintings from that show. the series was inspired largely by the celebrations following the 2020 tokyo olympics, but this particular image also has a tennis player and the outlines of an ancient greek image of a bull. the checkerboard patterning can be found in many of the works in this series.

adding collage and new marks to yesterday's plein air watercolors /  by Philip Tarlow

11-7-22 creek watercolor/collage 1, 4x14 1/2” watercolor & collage on arches watercolor paper

11:23 AM: once i returned to the house from the creek yesterday, and after gazing at the two watercolors for a while, i decided they both needed more work. so this morning, i added some new marks and collaged pieces to them both throughout the entire day. here are the before (left) and after (right) images:

plein air today /  by Philip Tarlow

today was plein air day. at 1pm i went out to the creek, where i made 2 watercolors while sitting, literally, one foot from the creek. and then at 2:30 mikela and i took our walk up the trail adjacent to the creek and i made a small colored pencil drawing at our stopping point about 1/2 hour up the trail.

pompeiian reverie final / 5 recent paintings /  by Philip Tarlow

BELOW are 5 17x21” paintings i’ve made over the past few weeks, which will be paret of my march solo show in athens.

1:29 PM:yesterday afternoon before leaving the studio i made a few additions to pompeiian reverie I. here’s the final version.

pompeiian reverie I

working back into "pompeiian reverie I" /  by Philip Tarlow

2:24 PM: can’t seem to complete this one. here’s the latest iteration, which is a definite improvement. i removed the collaged map piece and lo, an octopus has appeared!

can i please move on to pompeiian reverie II?? it’s getting kinda late & we need to be at a meeting at 4, so this might be it for the day.

a few more tweaks before moving on to pompeiian reverie II.

if you compare this version with the one below, which i posted earlier today, the main difference you’ll find is in the upper central portion of the composition. i collaged a blue piece of map, then painted some blue marks on top of it.

in addition, i gave more light to the eye of the grey fish below.

pompeiian reverie I as it looked moments ago

12:36 PM: fresh from my magnificent morning massage, i went back in to pompeiian reverie I, after wiping out the human figures i had put in yesterday. they simply didn’t work at all in the composition.

so now, it’s all sea creatures, all the way. some are painted in, others just outlines, creating playful negative spaces in an already brim-full compositin. the greens i added yesterday on instinct, reallly work well, and balance out the domnant oranges and siennas. another good move, i believe, is the light blue i applied to the left portion yesterday.

so i’m liking it as is, and i’ll move on now to pompeiian reverie II, most of which i wiped out as well yesterday afternoon.

at work on 4 paintings today /  by Philip Tarlow

pompeiian reverie I after wiping out figures on top

4:41 PM: before leaving the studio, i made some changes to pompeiian reverie I & II. i realized, as i was preparing to walk out the door, that some of the figures weren’t working. so, while the paint was still wet, i wiped them out. it looks kinda messy, but that will change tomorrow. if you scroll down & have a look at these two paintings before i wiped out the figures, you’ll likely see what i mean.

pompeiian reverie II after wiping out figures on top

pompeiian reverie I following today’s modifications

stage 1 of pompeiian reverie II, which i started today

3:02 PM: today, in addition to modifications to 11-1-22 swirling creek; pompeiian reverie and 12-2020 watercolor/collage, i started a new one: pompeiian reverie II which, while containing elements of the earlier version, jumps epochs from the 3rd C. BC to the 2020 tokyo olympic celebration. beneath the naked figures of the pompeiian mosaic are clothed revelers at the celebrations following the 2020 tokyo olympics, which i painted last year in a series of watercolors and oils.

as well today, i made some minor modifications to the area of white on the lower left corner of 11-1-22 swirling creek

11-1-22 swirling creek

12-2020 watercolor/collage

and finally, i modified the left portion of 12-2020 watercolor/collage, to which i made extensive changes yesterday. now, it bears little resemblence to the original 2020 plein air creekscape. but it’s a far better painting now, albeit an abstract one.

working on 3 paintings:11-1-22 swirling creek, pompeiian reverie and 12-20 creekscape /  by Philip Tarlow

pompeiian reverie at 4pm today

4:18 PM: i started out by making a new 21x17” oil inspired by ancient pompeiian floor mosaics, and moving back & forth between that & 11-1-22 swirling creek, which i’ve been working on for the past week and a 2020 creekscape watercolor, which has now become a watercolor/collage. i’m noticing an emerging aesthetic/energetic. it always starts with something more realist and then evolves towards abstraction.

11-1-22 swirling creek 21x17" next stage /  by Philip Tarlow

11-1-22 swirling creek 21x17" as it looked moments ago

5:01 PM: another long day, interrupted a few hours ago my our window installer, who needed to get into the house , take measurments & order materials. i continued work on 11-1-22 swirling creek 21x17". i made lots of changes, including collaged bits of light weight white drawing paper to break up the dense composition. i think i can resolve it tomorrow, when mikela will be out at the schools all day, as she was today. tomorrow by the way is predicted to be snowy, with sharply falling temperatures starting tonight.

BELOW: earlier today, on the left, and moments ago, on the right

modifying/simplifying 10/31/22 plein air #1/ starting “11/1/22 swirling creek” /  by Philip Tarlow

11/1/22 swirling creek, 21x17” oil & collage on linen, day 1

3:02 PM: i took one of the 21x17” canvasses i cut for the athens show and started 11/1/22 swirling creek. i had previously started working from an old photo i took of downtown athens. it was just a sketch, but i was doing it for all the wrong reasons, based on what i thought would be attractive to athenians. stupid motivation! so instead i dove into this new one based on some of the many plein air watercolors i’ve made and continue to make at one of our local creeks. this is day one, which as i’m in the habit of doing, has been scraped, painted into, scraped again until the magic of our creeks begins to appear, which is always secondary to the painterly gestures of the brush. let’s see where it takes me tomorrow. i’m cooked for the day.

11/1/22 i mentioned that i found yesterday’s 10/31/22 pleine air #1 too busy, especially in the upper quadrant.

so this morning in the studio i made some modifications, mostly using collaged elements, including from a map and a watch ad. gazing at it from afar, it seemsat the same time more coherent and more mysterious. the elements i thought were too much on top are faintly visible through the semi-transparent paper i used. and the obvious creek-scape elements dance well with the newly added collaged bits.

BELOW: the before & after

DETAIL