continuing work on "11-30-22 creek" after 3 days away from the studio /  by Philip Tarlow

2:02 PM: 3 days is a long time to be away form my studio, especially when i’m in the early stages of a new painting. how do you get back into that groove? i futzed around for a few hours, preparing my breakfast, reading about the new apple watch & going to the post office to pick up my shoes, which had been placed in a locker. turns out, the new shoes from rei were not in new condition, and had obviously been worn by someone before they were sent to me. i’ll call rei tomorrow & arrange to send them back.

so back to the painting. it’s one of a series i’m doing, all 17x21” oils, which will be included in my march, 2023 exhibition in athens. the most recent 3 all contain creek elements: rocks, water, branches, as well as areas inspired by 18th c. japanese prints. i’m finding it very natural to combine these two elements, allowing me to include colors, marks & forms you wouldn’t normally find in a creek-scape. or at least not in the creek paintings i’ve been making over the past few decades.

there are no short cuts to this evolution, and it’s very exciting for me to have reached this point in my development. in addition, as i’ve mentioned in recent blog posts, i’m learning when to stop for the day. took me long enough! it’s a combination of physical tiredness and listening for the buzzer in my head that lets me know i’ve run out of creative juice for the day.

11-30-22 creek on 11/30

11-30-22 creek at the end of my painting day today

starting "11-30-22 creek" /  by Philip Tarlow

2:08 PM: i felt complete with the two paintings i’d been working on over the past week, so i launched into a new one, having learned a lot along the way. and that’s what counts. my learning curve seems to have gotten steeper recently. i could be imagining this, but i feel that with each new painting, i take a leap. not forward, but upward!

so it will be interesting to have a 3 day break, when we have a series of doctors appointments, and then be back in the studio on sunday. if past experience is any guide, i will have digested what i’ve been learning and find myself on a new foooting with the painting i started today, which already contains new solutions, like the orange/yellow rock in the center of the composition, with it’s green shadows.

continued work on "japanese creek" and "july 7 creek" /  by Philip Tarlow

2:37 PM: lots of interruptions today, but i was able to get some work done on these two paintings, which i feel pretty good about. i’ve got to run now, so i’ll say more later this afternoon.

ok, i’m back. so i consider my two latest paintings breakthroughs. why?

all the previous creek inspired paintings i made were, to one degree or another, simplified, abstracted. these two go further, incorporating other, japanese inspired directions, resulting in a new personal language

japanese creek at the end of my painting day today

july 7 creek at the end of my painting day today

continued work on july 7 creek," / starting "japanese creek" /  by Philip Tarlow

3:47 PM: this morning i made some modifications to july 7 creek, focusing mainly on the lower left portion of the large rock in the foreground. i’m still not completely satisfied with it, and actually may go and rub out what i did this morning. it needs to be lighter. so i just now did that, and here’s what it looks like.

i’ll modify it when i’m fresh, tomorrow.

i started a new one mid day, titled japanese creek.

it’s inspired by a japanese work i discovered in my folder of recent photos. i was attracted to it’s wonderful patterns & colors, and felt an interesting connection to my creek-scapes. too early to tell….we’ll see where it goes next.

japanese creek in it’s infancy today

"july 7 creek," day 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

2:10 pm: i continued work on july 7 creek this morning, all the while casting glances at this 2020 creek watercolor. that’s because i find it’s a great example of how painting plein air allows me to focus on what matters, with no time to dilly dally. as a result, a unique balance is achieved, difficult to repeat in the studio setting. this one is a rare example of compositional and coloristic perfection, and thus can serve as a role model, as it were, for what i’m attempting here in my studio.

so is what i did today in the studio up to these high standards? maybe. without copying what i achieved in the 2020 watercolor, i believe i accesed the immediacy of strokes and the elimination of the unnecessary and merely descriptive. i can’t sustain this other worldly space for more than a few hours, at most.

and the trick is, as those of you who follow my blog are aware: knowing or better yet sensing when to stop. when i’m sitting on my little 3 legged stool next to the creek, that sensing is a lot easier & happens more naturally.

not unlike making love, there is a point beyond which there are diminishing returns.

2020 creek watercolor, painted in late summer, on site

july 7 creek as it looked at the end of my painting day today

re-working windows 1/ starting july 7 creek /  by Philip Tarlow

first stage of july 7 creek, 17x21” which i just started this afternoon

2:50 PM: after working on changes to windows 1 most of this morning, i started a new 17x21” oil on linen. right now it’s a composition based upon photos of the creek i shot a few years back on july 7th. at this early stage it’s a drawing with colored pencils & no other medium. you can see here the inspiration for most of my recent plein air watercolors like the ones you see BELOW.

now i’m preparing to leave for the house so that mikela and i can take our afternoon walk up the creek on this rather warm day. 48° F is, in case you were wondering, unusually warm for us at 8,000 ft. at this time of year

12:47 PM: windows 1 following a second round of re-working moments ago

12:48 PM: the area on the upper right, above the crouching installer, was distracting from the whole, so rubbed it out & used mostly white oil paint with a few strokes of yellow oil stick to simplify the area. from afar, it reads way better. i may leave it for now & keep casting furtive glances as i move on to something new.

12:09 PM: when i brought windows 1 over to the house, it became clear to both of us that it was too busy. too much going on, which was not allowing the composition to work at a glance, which it always should, no matter what. so this morning, fresh from a good nights sleep, i began working back into it. at first i used collage. but that wasn’t working, so i removed what i had collaged and began re-working it just using oil paint & oil pastels. for example, the blue line on top, where his richly patterned shirt was, is oil pastel stick. from 20 feet away, where i’m currently sitting in the studio, it almost works, but not quite. so i’ll go back into it & see what emerges.

BELOW: before & after

finishing touches to "windows 2" /  by Philip Tarlow

2:57 PM: i made a few subtle but all important finishing touches to windows 2 this morning. if you compare the two, BELOW, you can find them. the most significant was to the hand of the technician, smack dab in the upper center of the composition. he’s very precise with his hand movements when he’s working, and i think i captured that. all 4 figures, including the one hidden behind that hand i worked on, received some additional strokes. so for example, if you compare the shoes of the kneeling figure on the right before & after my tweaks, you’ll notice that, in yesterdays version, he had only one shoe, whereas now he has two.

it was, i will admit, tempting at times to “fill in the blanks,” and introduce colors to the armchair on the right, the stairs in the lower central portion of the composition, and so on. but that’s not what this painting wanted.

DETAIL of the hand i worked on this morning

day 2 of "windows 2"....adding a second figure /  by Philip Tarlow

2:35 PM: seems my nursery school teacher in brooklyn was right when she stated in her evaluation “Philip seems especially interested in watching construction workers.”

and if she only knew how greatly that interest would expand once i combined it with my passion for views from above!

so today i took windows 2 to the next stage. in the morning, i worked on the larger figure of the installer on the left side of the composition. this afternoon, a second figure was introduced; the same guy i introduced into the windows 1 composition, who, in this painting, is the figure in blue on the upper left.

compositionally, things have gotten more interesting now, with the architectural elements on the left playing against the ones on the right. i could actually leave the painting as is, which i might do. i always prefer to allow the space to breathe rather than filling it with unnecesary elements. as i have often said, this is, first and foremost, a painting, period. and not a painting of window installers. it’s a balance of painterly marks and colors defining a space pregnant with movement and suggested destinations.

windows 2 as it looked at the end of my painting day today

"windows 1" completed & signed / on to “WINDOWS 2” /  by Philip Tarlow

4:09 PM: after completing windows 1, i started windows 2 this afternoon. it’s still at a very early stage, and here’s what it looks like.

we’ll see where it wants to go tomorrow morning!

windows 2 at a very early stage.

windows 1 on 11/23/22 signed & completed

12:27 PM: at 8 this morning i went to a friend’s house to get my first lesson in bread making. not surprisingly, the process is not unlike my process of making a painting. over the next month or two, i’ll continue with my lessons until i get to the point where i can do it myself. apprenticeship: the best, most ancient way to learn!

windows 1: i went over the areas on his colorful shirt without doing too much, as i did & then wiped out yesterday afternoon. it’s signed & dated it & i’m ready to move on.

gazing at it from about 20 ft. here in the studio, it works compositionally and coloristicly. the subject matter, while compelling, does not dominate, and the interplay between the two figures is critical. without the obvious clue you get from the title, you would guess that these are 2 guys doing some sort of construction work. more importantly for me, you would experience it as a playful abstraction containting painterly marks, with a touch of the enigmatic….enough to draw you back in again and again.

DETAIL of the shirt, which i reworked today

more work on "windows 1," re-work of 10-12-22 watercolor/collage /  by Philip Tarlow

BELOW: windows 1 before (left) & after todays changes

2:44 PM: after removing the beard of the crouching window repair figure yesterday, i did more work on his colorful shirt, his arms & trousers. as it turns out, i did too much on the shirt, so before leaving the studio today, i went back in & took out a lot of what i did. tomorrow morning i’ll go back in to tk red outline on top.he shirt, restore what was there and remove the dar

i found a watercollage from october 12th, which was originally painted plein air, on site at the creek.some parts of the composition were bugging me, so i went back into it and made radical changes form the original, using oil pastels, collaged maps, colored pencils & charcoal.

in looking at the before & after images, i feel that the rework today created a far better piece, with a more coherent and compelling composition.

BELOW: 10/12/22 watercolor/collage before (left) & after todays re-work.