adjustments to "acropolis museum" 80x19.5" /  by Philip Tarlow

3:23 PM: i made further tweaks to acropolis museum just now. i think it’s vastly improved, but i may do more tomorrow morning when i’m fresh. it defintely reads a lot better from 25 feet, where i’m sitting right now.

i think the purple top of of the woman on the mid-low right has helped a lot.

acropolis museum, 80x19.5” following this morning’s tweaks

12:31 PM: i made some tweaks to acropolis museum this morning, mainly to a few of the figures, giving them some highlights that makes them POP more. the entire painting had been greyed after a session where i made all the colors a lot more vivid, which i ended up not liking.

BELOW: the figures i tweaked; mainly flesh highlights

jazz 14 re-work, day 3 /  by Philip Tarlow

jazz 14, 35x37” as it looked at the end of my painting day.

2:25 PM: i continued work on jazz 14, making substantial changes and revealing a bit more of the underlying, original version. i like that it doesn’t have any well defined figures; it’a all suggested and the main “subject” is the composition itself and the suggested sensuality.

the white strokes mid-left take it beyond it’s predecessors, to a new place, where my love for the great abstract experssionist deKooning supercedes any attachments to description. the familiar figures from my menagerie are present, but none stands out. it’s the edge of abstraction.

the thing about this way of working is that, when i do the underpainting, i have to believe that it’s final, and not something that will be painted over and possibly dissapear altogether. i even have to be excited about it! and once it gets to the stage jazz 14 reached today, i always wonder: how the fuck did i do that? and yet i keep doing it. it’s a mystery.

BELOW: yesterday’s version is on the left

jazz 14 re-work, day 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

jazz 14 35x37”, as it looked following this morning’s session.

1:44 PM: i continued work on the revised jazz 14 this morning, introducing a couple of figures from my “menagerie.” in keeping with the path my latest work has been taking, figures are indicated/suggested rather than being clearly defined and, as they are painted over ghost images of the underlying jazz 14, all is in flux. combined with the unpredictable results fom the scraping over i do with my palette knife, the results are very suggestive.

re-work of "jazz 14" & the evolution of the paintings leading to this point /  by Philip Tarlow

jazz 14 35x37”, as it looked following the white-over this morning, with ghost images of the previous versio

3:51 PM: having completed my re-work of jazz 15 yesterday and upon reviewing more paintings in my jazz series, i decided that jazz 14 wasn’t up to my present standards, so today i whited over most of it and tomorrow, when it’s reasonably dry, i’ll work into it.

increasingly, i love painting over the ghost images of a previous painting. it provides a unique opportunity and helps create what i’m calling magic. my ever expanding menagerie of characters, mostly viewed from above, are frozen in a moment of movement towards or away from one another, along with with traces of creek-scape; rocks, branches and flowing water.

what results is unpredictable, and allows the viewer to make up his or her own story about what’s going on, while delighting in the painterly brushwork, which has, clearly, evolved over many decades.

BELOW: jazz 14 before and afer today’s white-over.

5:50 PM: in going through the paintings leading up to this point, i found that this one: atsuita, painted on september 9th, could be seen as a transitional moment directly leading to the work i’ve been doing ove rthe past few weeks.

more work this morning on "Jazz 13" /  by Philip Tarlow

12:07 am: it was snowing this morning and i was in the mood to paint. so i continued working on jazz 13, which i whited over yesterday & started fresh, with traces of the previous version peeking through.

it’s a very different painting now. unfortunately, the color of the blue band at the top was impossible to reproduce. in person, it strongly suggests a distant body of water, broken by a grouping of creekscape rocks & two aspens. i can’t stop looking at what i did today! magic.

for those of you who follow my blog, you will recognize these figures from recent paintings. they are taken from my growing menagerie of actors; people doing things; engaging in a variety of activities, not posing, nor are they props. each one has captured my imagination for a different reason. and i feel i’m on a steep learning curve, introducing them together in a way that emerges when i allow myself to play…in an uncalculated, released fashion.

jazz 13 revisited /  by Philip Tarlow

jazz 13, 37x35” oil on linen, revised but not yet resolved following today’s re-work of the earlier version

1:19 PM: i painted over jazz 13, which had been hanging in my studio for a while, and i wasn’t crazy about. at first i was going to make some minor adjustments, but i’m in a different space now, so i whited over it & started fresh.

this is where it’s at right now, and tomorrow i’ll work further on it.

acropolis museum, 80x20" -continued /  by Philip Tarlow

acropolis museum, 80x20” oil on linen, as it looked yesterday (left) and following the work i did today

2:07 PM: the bright colors i introduced yesterday, while compelling, didn’t work for me when i entered my studio this morning and gazed at the painting critically. especially that bright green stripe on the left.

so now, it’s much more subdued, and the overall greyness allows the areas of color to sing. the subtle transitions allow the eye to roam slowly over this very tall, narrow composition, and to slowly realize that what we’re looking down at is probably a 2-300 foot expanse of one of the galleries in the acropolis museum, with the sunlight raking across the floor and the visitors taking in the experience, which many of them, who are foreign tourists may never have again.

DETAIL of the upper 1/4 of the painting

continued work on "acropolis museum" 80x20" /  by Philip Tarlow

1:50 PM: a little while ago i introduced some brighter colors. it’s still too wet to hang on the wall, so to avoid drips i climbed on a ladder and photographed it from above.

i’m liking where it’s going with these new brighter colors. i have to wait, sometimes hours, till i get the message to introduce something new.

tomorrow, when it’s dry enough, i’ll hang it on my east wall and take better photographs.

acropolis museum as it looked following today’s work

day 4, “acropolis museum” formerly "figures from above iv" ...further work needed? /  by Philip Tarlow

2:54 PM: when we both took a critical look at figures from above IV, we felt it needed more work, particularly in the area of floor beneath the woman with the red bag.

and after thinking about it last night, i decided acropolis museum is a better title. of course this means i have to go back and change the name in all my files, but that’s ok.

acropolis museum, 80x20”

day 3, "Figures From Above IV" livens up /  by Philip Tarlow

1:47 PM: it would appear that i had to go grey before diving into brighter colors. today is that day, and everything in this long narrow composition has livened up. it helped that i sent to image to my son in greece yesterday. he responded positively, but i could feel his mind wondering why my painting of the acropolis museum with strolling, gazing figures had to be so monotone.

so bright colors have appeared: on the floor, on the figures and the dark blue horizontal band of color up top. as well, an ancient marble relief sculpture has appeared at the very top, giving the couple facing it a focus of attention.

i entered the studio with a different spirit today, and now, as i gaze at the painting from my usual 20 ft. distance, i’m amazed at the transfromation!