starting jazz 13 /  by Philip Tarlow

jazz 13 post- scraping

4:52 PM: just before leaving the studio to take our creek walk, i went over to jazz 13 and did some scraping. that broke up the realist aspect of the composition and laid the groundwork for what i’ll be doing tomorrow morning.

the eye more easily perceives this as a composition rather than a brd, a nude, an athlete….

jazz 13 as it looked this afternoon at the end of my painting day.

1:59 PM: i’m having to change all the jazz series numbers because jazz 5 wasn’t viable to i dropped it from the series.

i feel complete with jazz 12, which i completed 2 days ago. yesterday was all about logistics, so i didn’t paint. i needed a break anyway. so this morning i started jazz 13, which has the same dimensions as the rest of the series: 35x37”/89x94cm. i think it’s a good start, and tomorrow will be a critical day because it’s hard to know whether i can get back into the groove i was in today.

the creature to the right of the tennis player is actually a bird, believe it or not! it’s from my growing collection of over 200 images of mostly rare birds found throughout the world.

i’m beginning to see my huge collection of photos as source material, more and more valued, for the new paintings in the jazz series. they lead me into the unknown, a little like a game of chess with ever shifting pieces which have ever shifting ways of moving about the board, or in this case the composition. if they start getting too predictable, i scrape or paint over them. perhaps a more accurate analogy would be JAZZ, which of course is the title of the series. which takes us back to thelonious monk, the initial inspiration of the series. if you’ve never listened to his music, take a listen and maybe you’ll get where i’m coming from.

starting "jazz 12" /  by Philip Tarlow

jazz 12, day 1. 35x37”/89x94 cm. oil on portrait linen

2:27 PM:i ran out of steam a little while ago, so i’m stopping for the day. i’m also having some pain in my right lower jaw, which is where the temporary crowns were inserted. so i’ll go back to the house, lie down & put some ice on it.

following along the path i carved out with the previous 3-4 paintings in my jazz series, this one is a lot more colorful with it’s pinks, blues, greens & bright yellows. inspired by 18th c. japanese prints and melding them with some of the figures seen from above from my growing series of images shot as far back as 10 years ago, and working always with an ever present awareness of exactly what the diebenkorn quote below so eloquently puts forth, i continue to zero in on my voice; my note.

working on the extra fine portrait linen is making all the difference in my work. brushing on the colors is really magical; no other surface i’ve worked on has this quality. so i just ordered 2 more rolls. if i continue with these dimensions, that should provide me with enough canvas for about 36 new paintings!

today’s palettes, can be seen BELOW.

12:35 PM: this morning i got to work on a new canvas: jazz 13. this doesn’t mean i’m done with all the previous one; there’s always a possibility i may decide one of them needs more work.

as i continue working, i wanted to post this great quote from diebenkorn:

 

“Values come from the individual. I feel that a forceful quality in art, truly representative of our modern situation, will rise above the labels of abstraction and realism. A painter, as Elmer Bischoff puts it, responds to the visible facts of the paint on the canvas which clarifies and refines his feelings as do words for the poet. This way a painter is bound to reflect himself and his times.” —Richard Diebenkorn, 1957

continued work on jazz 12 /  by Philip Tarlow

jazz 12 35x37”/89x94cm. as it looked at the end of my painting day.

3:50 PM: blue replaces grey: in an unexpected move, i painted out the central female figure and replaced most of the greys with a light cobalt teal bluish. it sets off the oranges from what shows through of the under-painting and created what looks, from this 20 foot distance, to be pure magic!

i feel like i’ve been persuing this result ever since i embarked on my journey with jazz 1, at the beginning of may. it could never have happened without my sometimes wavering but never absent persistance; true of a lot of things in life, isn’t it?

as well, i couldn’t have made these end of day modifications had we gone on our planned trail walk. when mikela asked me how the weather looked, i said they were predicting thunderstorms right about the time we planned on walking. so far they haven’t materialized, but the threat made us cancel our walk and gave me the opportunity to do further work on jazz 12.

BELOW: before and after the changes i just made

detail, showing how the underpainting plays a role

jazz 12 as it looked moments ago, after painting over most of what i did yesterday

2:08 PM: you might ask youself, since he knows when he’s making the first stage of a jazz Iseries painting that the next day he’ll be painting over it, how can he be so ernest about it? can’t answer that.

earlier today i added some figures, two of which are the walking guy in the plaid shirt who, as you know if you read my blog daily, is inspired by a shot from above of the central character in the tv serial the good doctor.

yesterday’s work, which has become an under-painting, peeks through in spots, giving me that unpredictable distribution of shapes & colors i so love. i ran out of the claessens medium texture primed linen i had been using, and until the new rolls arrived, i cut a few pieces from what’s left of my highly prized quadruple primed, VERY expensive, tightly woven artfix portrait linen. you may not be able to discern the difference by looking at an online photo, but in person and up close, the difference is very obvious, especially when i’m painting on it.

most of what i did today was done on my painting table and not with the canvas tacked to the wall. a lot of what i did involved drawing the figures with a brush, and i find this a lot easier when i’m making the drawing while standing, with the canvas on a flat surface.

starting "jazz 12" /  by Philip Tarlow

jazz 12, 35x37”/89x94cm. oil on portrait linen, as it looked at the end of my painting day today.

2:24 PM: i stopped here so i’d have time to post, get back to the house, change & get to the 3:30 meeting. it’s a good start, continuing the trend towards more varied colors & patterns, drawing from many sources but mostly my GUT!

at work moments ago on the new jazz 12. it has the same dimensions as the rest in this series: 35x37”/89x94cm.

1:13 PM: i have about another hour & a half left to paint before we leave for our meeting. so i started work on jazz 12 and will continue painting. i’ll post what i did before leaving the studio at about 3pm.

11:21 AM: today will be a shorter day in the studio, as we have a Land Trust meeting to attend at 3:30, having to do with important local issues such as fire mitigation, etc.

i’m preparing a new canvas and am about to launch in to the unknown; i’ll update once i’ve made some early marks…

improving the singer figure /  by Philip Tarlow

final update today to the singer’s face

2:20 pm: one more update to the singers mouth before we go up the trail on our walk

jazz 11 following further improvements to her face i just made

12:31 PM: i was about to start jazz 12 but when i glanced at the face of the singer it still wasn’t right, so i made a few tweaks.

11:17 PM: i was still not completely happy with the face of the singer, so i did some more work on it and i think it’s way better.

jazz 11 following the work i did earlier on the face and robe of the japanese singer

11:20 AM: the figure of the japanese singer on the left needed improvement. her face & arms were unfinished and the patterning on her dress needed some zing. so that’s what i’ve been up to this morning.

the jsinger before today’s work

the japanese singer following work i did earlier

HAPPY JUNE 1!/additional work on “jazz 11” /  by Philip Tarlow

jazz 11 with the changes i made just as i was about to walk out the door.

4:29 PM: i was about to walk out the door when….you guessed it, i was hit with a flash of lightening, metaphorically of course. you can see the result in this new photo. i’m going back to the house & may write more later.

jazz 11, 37x35”/89x94cm. as it looked moments ago, at the end of my painting day

3:38 PM: i did more work on jazz 11, extending the grey fully out to the left border and the yellow up to the top. this greatly benefitted the composition as a whole. adding another figure next to the singer, as i did a few hours ago, was juat crowing the composition, so i took it out. i added some darker grey on the lower half of the singer’s dress, which works really well.

that said, there may be a spark missing, and it’s likely i need to start something new, as usual, so that my full attention is not on this painting, which is actually a negative. so i’ll start something tomorrow morning and see where it goes. at some point, the spark may ignite.

DETAIL of the japanese figure i added yesterday

1:30 PM: mikela stopped by on her way to the college in alamosa. she felt that the left portion needed to be filled out somewhat, as did i. i jest needed a second opinion from a trusted eye, and that gave me the courage to go back in to jazz 11, which i sort of considered resolved yesterday.

while i love the changes and additions i made yesterday, in my gut i knew i would have to go back in today. so here’s where it’s it so far, and i’ll continue working right after posting this.

revision of jazz 11 /  by Philip Tarlow

jazz 11 as it looked moments ago, at the end of my painting day today.

2:54 PM: i wasn’t satisfied with the 1:30 pm changes, so i continued working, and here’s the result.

ON THE RIGHT are the areas i most worked on: the figur eof the female singer and, to her right, what was originally a bird has become a japanese figure with an extrvagant hat!

1:27 PM: the original blue bird, from day 1 of jazz 11, as beautiful as it was, was no longer an effective part of this composition. so today, after our first morning creek walk of the season, i painted over it. still not certain of the result, so i may go back into it now. here’s the before & after, BELOW

continued work on "jazz 11" /  by Philip Tarlow

1PM: those lines i added an hour ago weren’t working. they were from my head and not my gut. so i took most of them out, extended the yellow a bit further up & i’m calling it a day. seems crazy to me, but after a few hours i’m feeling almost as bad as i did right after i bit my cheek & caused the wound. i’m just going to have to be patient, rest a lot, take tylenol & apply ice, which does help quite a bit. so i cleaned my brushes, which i forgot to do yesterday, and will head back to the house as soon as i post this.

on a positive note, i’m finding this one interesting. first off, for now at least, it has transcended the previous 10 versions of the jazz series. it’s neither a grouping of figues on a white ground, or a grey ground. the patterns on the singer’s dress; the yellow area at the top; the green surrounding the bird; the pink to the right of the walking figure; the purple shadow he’s casting and the blue on the far right combine to help create a composition that is both less austere and contains more movement and musicality. we watched the bee gee documentary last night, and this is more like the unique harmony they created together, that could only emerge from such a tight knit family.

BELOW: 4 stages of jazz 11

jazz 11 as it looked moments ago, after about an hour of work

BELOW: the painting at about 11:15 is on the left, and on the right, moments ago

12:15 PM: i’m still experiencing the after effects of my cheek bite, so i had to stop and apply ice. here’s where it’s currently at, and i’ll know in a little while whether i can continue or have to go back to the house & lie down.

jazz 11 35x37”/89x94 cm. oil on linen, as it looked following my first round of painting this morning

10:50 AM: mikela had to leave for school this morning at 8, which means i needed to be ready by then, and as a result i got a welcome early start in the studio. i was able to do a bit more on the new jazz 11, which at the end of my painting day yesterday had only a blue patterned bird. i wasn’t sure i’d be able to keep it without painting over it, but so far, there he/she is, looking about confused by all that he/she is surrounded with!

"jazz 7" revisions continued / STARTING “jazz 11” /  by Philip Tarlow

3:41 PM, this is the very first stage of jazz 11. oil on linen, 35x37”/94x89cm.

3:36 PM: after completing revisions on jazz 10, i started work on…guess what? jazz 11!!

as with the previous jazz 10, it’s starting out with image of a bird; one of the 214 i currently have in my birds album on my iphone. this one’s a pretty little guy/girl, but that doesn’t mean he/she won’t eventually be painted over.

detail of stage 1, jazz 11

jazz 7, 37x35”/94x89 cm. oil and collage on linen, as it looked following further revisions made earlier today.

1:15 PM: i was not happy with how this painting looked yesterday at the end of my painting day. today i added lots of that grey you can find in many of the other jazz series paintings. it might seem to you that they’re repetative, but actually they are in my world simply variations on a theme, much as you find in music. seen all together, which i envision happening in the not too distant future, the viewer will ideally have an experience not unlike Rachmaninoff: Variations on a Theme of Chopin, Op.22 (Chochieva)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiDtLscGnn8

the theme, in this case, is the walking figure seen from above, with the blue plaid shirt. he is, actually, inspired by a shot from above i captured on our tv, of the main character in the tv serial, the good doctor.

BELOW: the history of jazz 7

revisions to "jazz 7" inspired by "jazz 9" /  by Philip Tarlow

jazz 7 following today’s revisions, which will continue tomorrow

2:36 PM: yesterday’s revisions to jazz 9 made me take another look at jazz 7 , and i began feeling there was too much white, which was preventing the composition as a whole from declaring itself.

going to take our creek walk in 15 minutes, so i’ll continue my comments when we’re back.

BELOW: jazz 7 before & after today’s revisions