mid-day collage / the drummer pink-over /  by Philip Tarlow

the drummer, 35x37” as she looked at the end of my painting day today.

1:58 PM: following the work i did earlier, i went back in the the drummer. my challenge was the fact that it had become far too busy. by the end of the day yesterday, so i knew i was just going to have to leave it until today.

my first move was to mix up some pink oils in an old yoghurt container, consisting of titanium zinc white and two different reds. i applied it with one of my medium wide brushes, going around the figures i wanted to keep and painting over the ones i didn’t. yesterdays paint was, for the most part, dry enough to be able to pull that off without too much schmiring.

i have to keep it flat until the paint dries enough tomorrow to be able to hang it on the wall, which i did for about a minute to take a quick shot. you can see the resulting drops on the jumping skateboarder, which i like.

BELOW: the drummer yesterday & today

12:49 PM: i had a collage on paper sitting on my counter for months, and every time i glanced at it, i thought :”i’ve got to do morework on this.” so today i did. it may not be the final version, but it’s a whole lot better than it used to be!

the drummer, day 2 / sunset sky /  by Philip Tarlow

the drummer, 35x37” oil on linen, day 2 as it looked moments ago, at the end of my painting day today

3:22 PM: each day that passes since my lanap surgery last thursday finds me with less pain and more energy.

so today was spent taking the drummer to her next stage. there’s a lot going on here; perhaps too much. we’ll see in the morning. but there are passages i think work, and constitute a breakthrough of sorts. patterning has always been a core element in my work, as have views from above and the combining of different figures from very different sources. here, in the upper portion, we find the addition of a creekscape, with aspen trunks moving vetically through the composition and backing up to the olympic skateboarder diagonally above the drummer. it’s evolving in spurts, between snacks of mashed avocado on bread stripped of it’s crust, which i can’t yet eat.

the negative spaces in the olympic symbol read from afar as playful green dots, and the newly introduced figure of a viola player standing upright with his instrument seems to observe the play of form and color.

BELOW: the drummer on days 1 & 2

5:12 PM: after a cloudy, cold day with occasional flurries, the sun broke through at sunset.

the drummer, day 1 / stretching the completed "jazz 20" /  by Philip Tarlow

the drummer, 35x37” on day 1, at the end of my painting day today

1:58 PM: after stretching jazz 20, i started a new painting: the drummer, dimensions 35x37” i’ll continue work on this one tomorrow; right now i’m calling it a day, earlier than usual as i haven’t fully recovered from the gum laser surgery and am still on a liquid diet.

jazz 20, 35x37” oil on linen, 2023

11:32 AM: now that i made some tweaks to jazz 20 a few days ago, i delared it completed and strtched it this morning. i think i’ll bring it over to the house this afternoon and see how it looks hanging there. here it is on my east studio wall.

more work on "jazz 14" /  by Philip Tarlow

jazz 14, 37x35” as she looked at the end of my painting day today

2:59 PM: although i’m only in the second day of recovery from my LANAP laser gum sergury, i felt enough energy today to do some painting, so i continued work on jazz 14, which has gone through many stages recently.

i whited over it this morning, and then worked into it, focusing on the now bare breasted female figure with her red hat. the addition of some red, blue & green lines on either side and at the bottom of the composition, viewed from a distance as i’m now doing, give a richness to the largely greyed out composition, allowing us to focus on the central female figure while not forgetting about the composition as a whole.

the swirl of strokes above, and the ghost images of previous versions add mystery to the painting as a whole. the newly added blue wavy lines to the right of the figure give us a hint that the female figure and her husband are overlooking the water; in this case, the river running through alamosa.

jazz 20: the yellow paddle /  by Philip Tarlow

jazz 20 following my tweak to the yellow paddle.

11:44 AM: i had a LANAP gum surgery yesterday, which was far more intense than expected. it’s going to take a few more days for me to get to the point where i can resume my normal painting schedule. so today, all i did was to briefly work on the paddle of one of the two figures in jazz 20, which i made a bright yellow, as it appears in the photo i had shot.

more work on jazz 14 & 20 /  by Philip Tarlow

jazz 20 following todays work

jazz 14 following todays work

1:57 PM: this morning i continued work on jazz 14 and jazz 20. both are still in process, and i’m feeling good about the direction they’re taking.

the bright pink background in jazz 20 has been whited over and awarm grey introduced around the paddlers. the tennis player on the right is now just a ghost image, as is the walking figure in the plaid shirt in jazz 14. both paintings now have a softer appearance, making it easier to focus on what have now become the main characters and allowing, for example, the red of her hat in jazz 14 to gain importance in the composition.

fundamental changes to "jazz 14" /  by Philip Tarlow

jazz 14 following todays work

2:15 PM: today is st. philip’s day in the greek orthodox tradition, because of my 15 year stay in greece, it’s something i’m used to celebrating. so chronia polla to me and to my grandson philip in athens.

jazz 14 wasn’t working for me, so i whited over most of it and started fresh, leaving only a trace of the walking plaid-shirted figure and ghost images of the underlying versions. i flipped it 90 degrees, so it’s now 37x35”.

i mainly worked off a photo i shot recently in salida, of a couple on the rocks with their 2 kids. as is my tendency currently, there’s more suggestion than description. there are a few touches of blues, pinks and reds in the clothing and flesh, but nothing hard core descriptive.

i love the unforeseen swirls of oranges that happened when i whited over then scraped into yesterday’s version!

tweaks to jazz 14 & 20 /  by Philip Tarlow

3:52 PM: after working on tweaks to jazz 14, i moved on to jazz 20, which had become far too busy yesterday. you’ll see the difference in the comparative images BELOW. i’ll probably do more tomorrow, but right now it’s definitely in a much better place.

jazz 20 as it looked yesterday (left) and just now

jazz 14 following today’s tweaks to the female figure.

12:47 PM: this morning i gave more definition to the female figure on the left-center so that she pops and becomes more of an anchor for the entire composition. from a distance, now that this anchor is in place, everything else in jazz 14 magically works!

so i’m getting ready to do more work on jazz 20, which became to complicated yesterday.

jazz 20: so what's the story here?/ new creek drawing today /  by Philip Tarlow

5:23 PM: we took our creek walk this afternoon and i made this quick colored pencil sketch.

todays creek drawing

jazz 20 as she looked moments ago, following the work i did this morning

11:30 AM: every painting has a story. so what’s the story of jazz 20?

she started her life as the last painting in a series titled jazz. the title derives from the fact that, when i started the first painting in what i did not know at the time would become a series, i was listening to thelonious monk playing piano in a way only he could make happen, moment by moent; twist & turn by twist & turn,

the series has in common the dimensions of the paintings: all 35x37” or verticals 37x35”. jazz 20 started her life on october 1, 2023 with 4 images, one of which was a bird painted in detail.

the following afternoon, the bird had been painted over and in it’s place was a japanese figure next to the familiar walking fellow with the blue plaid shirt.

the next afternoon, on october 3, the painting was flipped 360 and painted over in warm grey, with the introduction of the familiar woman in black with the red shoulder bag, who has appeared numerous times in jazz series paintings.

then on october 4th, the painting was once again flipped 360 and more figures were introduced into the now broken up and scraped warm grey ground.


BELOW is a chronological record of jazz 20 from october 3 through today, november 12th. you’ll be able to observe my process of finding the voice, or song of a painting, despite the fact that, frequently, it means painting over passages i had considered sacred when i painted them, never to be disturbed.

so, naturally, the story is autobiographical. it has as much to do with the quality of my sleep the previous night as it does with which painters i was studying over breakfast that morning.

for the viewer, observing the work in a gallery, museum or private residence, the story can be felt, if not actually seen, the more he/she looks, moves away and, hopefully, returns. in many cases, the observer will create their own story, just as valid as mine. and, underlying all this, is the painterly factor, which can be seen and felt according to one’s experiences in the history of art.

BELOW: a chronological history of jazz 20 after october 4th



jazz 20 on day 1 of her life, october 1, 2023

jazz 20 on day 2, october 2

jazz 20 as she looked at 1pm on october 3

jazz 20 as she looked at 3pm on october 4th

jazz 20 /  by Philip Tarlow

jazz 20, 35x37” as it looked moments ago, at the end o fmy painting day

2:06 PM: enough time has passed since i last worked on jazz 20 that i no longer feared messing with it. i knew in my gut that it could improve as a composition, so today i jumped in with both feet.

the whitish area on the right is still unresolved. i like that i broke up the pink ground and i especially love what happened around the head and shoulders of the lower paddler. you may not have realized that, on the upper right is a tennis player throwing the ball up to serve. i didn’t do anything to that figure, which i feel serves as a counterbalance to the more boldly painted paddlers on the left. i photographed those guys looking down from a bridge in alamosa some years back, and they’ve found their way into quite a few paintings since then.

as a composition, from where i’m sitting about 25 feet away, it’s far more interesting than it was. we’ll see what happens tomorrow!

BELOW: yesterday’s version is on the left