revising "Jazz 16"/ continuing work on “gained vision III” /  by Philip Tarlow

2 PM: a little over an hour ago, i shifted my attention from jazz 16 to gained vision III, part of which i had whited over 3 days ago. i did some work on the face, hair & upper body of the japanese woman in red, and then softened it by blotting before stopping for the day. i love that it’s softer and more atmospheric than the two preceding it, so i’m taking it very slow.

gained vision III following the work i did today

DETAIL: gained vision III following today’s work

12:29 PM: a few days ago, i went back into jazz 16, 35x37”/94x89cm.,replaing the skateboarder with a different figure. i wasn’t happy with it, so today i made some radical changes in the entire composition, perhaps influenced by the direction that my new gained vision series, which is at an early stage, but contains elements i’d like to fold into some of the jazz series paintings.

most of the jazz series work, with some exceptions, consists of figures in motion, on a solid grey or white background. so now, as you will see from the comparative before and after photos, the space is broken up by playful curviliniar shapes combined with blocks of solid colors with mostly geometric shapes. so that curves and streight lines co-exist in a fashion that challenges the viewer’s eye to take a journey. hints of miro and diebenkorn are present, but the full impression reflects a journey through my six decades of mark making, with an emphasis always on the unpredictable.

jazz 16 following the work i just did today

jazz 16 as it looked on june 19

continued work on "gained vision lll" & a look back at "Pink Flash," 2022, 78x12"/198.12x30.5cm. /  by Philip Tarlow

3:20 PM: today i unexpectedly divided my time between gained vision III and jazz 16.

gained vision III: i flipped it 180° again, so that the figure in red is now once again right side up and in the top half of the composition. i whited over the pompeiian fish mosaic-inspired stuff i did yesterday band placed my favorite walking figure from above, with his blue plaid shirt, in the lower quadrant.

as i worked on it, i happened to be standing right in front of jazz 16, which is tacked to my east facing painting wall. the black top and the fuzzy face on the jumping female skateboarder had been bugging me ever since the last time i worked on this painting. so, between strokes i was making on gained vision III, i painted over her black top, replacing it with her bare breasts. as well, i reworked her head, hair, arms & legs. i’m going to post the before and after, and i think you’ll agree that it works much better compositionally, but it also stirs the imagination to view a bare breasted skateboarder.

gained vision III now reads, from a distance , as an incomplete but compelling image, the figure of the japanese woman in red, while still pale from having been whited over, gives the painting an air of mystery. i’ll have a choice tomorrow, just how much to accent certain passages and which ones to leave alone. it’s a huge relief to have gotten rid of the fish, which i realy wasn’t that into.

7:12 AM: before my morning meditation, i wanted to post this 2022 oil, which now hangs in our living room. if you look carefully, you’ll discern that this painting, while seeming abstract, is actually figurative abstraction. see how many human or animal forms or parts you can find.

BELOW: 2 details of the painting

"gained vision III" changes gears /  by Philip Tarlow

12:52 PM: this morning when i did my firsr glance at gained vision III while having my breakfast, i was bored and disinterested. never a good sign!

so i laid it out on my painting table & went over the whole thing with a diluted white oil paint, then in imagined defiance, i tacked it upside down to my painting wall.

i jumped right in, riffing on a pompeiian fish mosaic that has appeared in earlier paintings. my palette of greens, yellows, siennas & muted blacks gives it, at this stage of development, a wonderful fluidity, helped greatly by the whited over ghost images beneath. it never fails to amaze and delight me, and of course it’s not something you can anticipate as you’re diligently working on what will eventually become a ghost.

you can’t plan to be in your groove, but, as i’ve said many times, when you are, you better recognize it and take advantage!

with hte ever growing mid day heat, i get tired earlier & need to go lie down with my honey. next week the temperatures will climb to the low 90’s; rare but not unheard of for crestone, which if you recall is at 8,000 ft. where we live in the baca grande.

gained vision: this is the detail of the top quarter of the composition

gained vision III, 80x20”/203x51 cm., as it looked at the end of my painting day today

the next stage of "gained vision III" /  by Philip Tarlow

lower portion, gained vision III, after my end of day scrape at 4pm

gained vision III 80x20”/203x51cm., oil on portrait linen as it looked today at the end of my painting day

3:12 PM: after going for a great creek walk thi smorning, i arrived at the studio about 10am and renewed work on gained vision III.

we were hesitant about walking up the trail after reading a ost by a friend who lived furtherout in the valley, about how bad the mosquitoes are this season and how they were biting right through her wool socks. but we flipped a coin, which said we should go. we wore our netted mosquito jackets, and even though there were a lot of them, we didn’t get bitten. so now we’ll be resuming our usual schedule: every other day.

i worked solely on the lower portion of gained vision III, adding the figures of two dancing woman from the cloding ceremony/celebration of the 2020 olympics. this is not the first time i’ve made them part of a composition, and very well may not be the last.

5:38 PM: as usual, seconds before exiting the studio to run into town & shop, I did a scrape over the area i worked on today.

this morning over breakfast, i read this superb quote about matisse, by john elderfield in the catalogue from the 1992 retrospective at MOMA


continuing "gained vision III" /  by Philip Tarlow

gained vision III, 80x20”/203x51 cm. as she looked at the end o fmy painting day today.

1:50 PM: i continued work on gained vision III, and stopped just a few minutes ago, mainly because i was tired & didn’t want to do any more until i’m fresh, tomorrow morning.

right now, she is looking a lot like her sister: gained vision II, but that won’t last long. although the figure of the japanese woman in red may remain, the composition will be different, and incorporate what i learned on the previous one. right now, the red of her garment has two tones, due to the fact that i used oil pastels for the upper reds and oil paint for the lower, brighter red.

it’s hard to move this very fine unstretched linen from the work table and tack it to the wall, which is why you see those wrinkles on the bottom half. once she’s completed and stretched, they will dissapear.

at work earlier on the upper portion of gained vision III

12:15 PM: i resumed work on the new gained vision III a little while ago. it’s still very early stage.

starting "gained vision III" /  by Philip Tarlow

DETAIL of stage 1, gained vision III, 80x20”/203x51cm. , oil on portrait linen

3:19 PM: now that gained vision II is singing it’s song, i strtaed work on a new one: gained vision III, which has the same dimensions: 80x20”/203x51cm. for now, it has only a touch of color & is mostly a colored pencil drawing, so tomorrow, sunday it will begin to blossom.

continued work on "gained vision II" /  by Philip Tarlow

4:13 PM: i was interrupted at 12:30, when i had to go to a meeting involving the fire mitigation commitee i volunteered for. as it turned out, they were just doing some logistics and i didn’t really need to be there, so i left. but it took a while for me to get back into it.

it’s at a point now where it sings, which is always the goal and the vision. as the eye roams the surface, blues show up just when you least expect it, and yet you feel that’s exactly where they belong. the reds of the garment worn by the main figure is muuch like a beating heart of the painting, and contribute significantly to the singing. the yellow horizontal up top aligns with the yellow triangle on the lower right. and the walking figure with his plaid shirt take the composition from abstraction just enough. right now, i don’t feel like there’s any more to do tomorrow on this one.

the work i just did made me appreciate even more this priceless quote from painter gary komarin, whose work i admire greatly.

“My paintings proceed without preconception. I paint to find out what it is that I am going to paint. I think of myself as a stagehand who sets up the conditions necessary for drama to unfold. The very best paintings are most often those that fail the most. Once a painting has achieved a life of its own, when it speaks back to you as a painter, this is a good place to be. For me, the best paintings are those that paint themselves.”

"working on gained vision LL" today /  by Philip Tarlow

gained vision ll, 80x20” oil on portrait linen, at the end of my painting day today

2:42 PM: i felt complete with gained vision I when i looked at it this morning, so i resumed working on gained vision II. it was very sketchy, so i did a lot, primarily on the lower half, but i made some interesting marks on the upper portion as well, fleshing out the walking figure from above, the main character in the series the good doctor.

of course, at the moment, the composition is dominated by the japanese woman in red. that vertical black mark starting at her left shoulder and going down, is all important to the composition as it stands. the curved creek branch above her head with the blue water & white bubbles takes the viewer to a very different dimension, as do the geometric yellow & green blocks of color.

where will she go next? i’d like to allow as much white space as possible, so we’ll see in the morning where she wants to go, if anywhere.

continued work on "gained vision L" and a 2020 ? oil i found in my storage /  by Philip Tarlow

2:41 PM: today is my first day back in the studio. although we got back monday evening, yesterday was devoted to organizing, unpacking, etc.

so, after the obligatory futzing around, i dove back in to gained vision I. it was a tricky thing to do, as it was pretty cool after i last worked on it, but there was too much white, and our friends dan & bryna agreed with that assesment when i brought it with us to carbondale & showed it to them.

so i did quite a bit today, while allowing some of the white spaces to continue breathing. with what i did today, i was reminded of gorky. his best compositions, while they were heavily worked on, scraped over & repainted,

squeezing out the colors from the tubes this morning

gained vision on 6/21 23

gained vision I as it looked following today’s changes

2017 tarlow study of a painting by archile gorky

untitled creekscape on 2 16x20” canvases i just discovered in my storage, most likely painted in 2020

returning to the studio tomorrow /  by Philip Tarlow

2:54 PM: i’ll be returning to my studio tomorrow to resume work on both gained vision I & II. i’ll arrive bright & early, since mikela has to leave early for school. we had a great weekend visiting with our dear friends in carbondale, about 4 hours drive from crestone. while we were there, i made a small colored pencil drawing of the view from their living room, with a view of their back yard and in the foreground, a portion of their piano, draped in a beautiful fabric.