celebration 22, 32x36” oil & collage on portrait linen, at 2:30 PM
BELOW: celebration 22 at 11 am (left) and 3:25 pm
1:02 PM: i got to the studio unusually early today: 8:30. so i’ve been painting celebration 22 for over 4 hours now. it’s esentially a different painting now, but interestingly, does feature the same leaping gymnast from the paris olympics who appeared in the very first version, which you can see in yesterday’s post.
celebration 22 32x36” oil on portrait linen, as she looked at the end of my painting day today
3:46 PM: i whited over what i painted this morning, and this is the current state of celebration 22. see ya tomorrow!
celebration 22, 32x36” oil on portrait linen, was started today, thus far inspired by the 2024 paris olympics
2:42 PM: this morning i started painting celebration 22, 32x36”
8:38 AM: this is a detail of one of my jazz series paintings hanging in our house, 80x19” oil on linen.
BELOW: CELEBRATION 21 RIGHT: as it looked yesterday afternoon and LEFT: after todays faces tweaks
2:10 PM: i made slight tweaks to the 2 faces today.
celebration 21, 32x36” oil & collage on portrait linen at the end of my painting day
3 PM: i shot some photos of the 2024 paris olympics from the tv screen last night and promptly used them in a painting aafter whiting over the one i did yesterday. painting into the still wet white oil paint gives a certain quality which would be impossible to create otherwise. it also gave me a way to eliminate that annoying yellow tone on this portrait linen, which i’m in the process of getting replaced.
so this was one of the guys who did those hard to believe moves on one hand, twirling and bending his body as though it were a piece of liquorice!
celebration 21 32x36” oil & collage on portrait linen at 3:45 pm today
2:17 PM: this is probably the 3rd or maybe 4th time i’ve painted over what i did the previous day. this time it was with yellow. i worked back into it, introducing 2 large female figures, one of which is wearing a red garment. the black outlining creates a boldness surpassing it’s celebration series
entrance to panachrandou monastery, andros 1999, 22x23” gouache on paper
12:10 PM: in 1999 i made a series of paintings based on my visits to the Panachrandou Monastery in the moutains of Andros, in the Cycladic islands. this one, which was among the over 100 paintings returned to me from Gremillion Gallery in Houston after it closed, measures 22x23” and is in gouache on paper.
celebration 21, 32x36”, oil & collage on portrait linen, as she looked at the end of my painting day today
2:11 PM: yesterdays version was interesting, but too specific and descriptive. ok, so there’s a girl doing a handstand and thbeginnings of a bird…more and more, i’m learning to integrate my passion for painting figures in motion; for creekscapes with pure, painterly marks, giving the viewer space for his/her own creation of a painting. the newly collages calligraphic marks on paper contribute greatly to this integration. they were deliberately placed over more descriptive areas of the composition.
this is leading me towards revisiting, in this spirit, some recent paintings i had considered resolved. we’ll see…
celebration 21, 32x36” oil & collage on portrait linen at the end of my painting day today
2:53 PM: i took celebration 21 to the next level today. i collaged a piece of paper with some calligraphy in the central area of the composition, and began adding two birds inspired by an ancient roman mosaic. i like what happened; that said, it needs more work to reach resolution.
being in my studio almost every day, as opposed to the old days when we were travelling extensively to lead seminars and do consulting, home for maybe 2 weeks then off again. the resulting continuity i find priceless!
the start of the 2 birds
the paper with calligraphy i collaged is on upper left
celebration 21 32x36” oil & collage on portrait linen as she looked at the end of my painting day
2:31 PM: this morning i whited over the entire painting, with a diluted enough white to allow what i did yesterday to peek through. as you know if you follow my daily blog, i love this! it allows what i paint over it to vibrate in a way that would be impossible on a fresh white surface. i also collaged 2 pieces of paper with calligraphic brush marks, which i made this morning.
on a different note, this new roll of primed white portrait linen is not white! it’s got a yellowish tint. i thought of sending it back, but this slight tint to the suface is actually proving to be interesting, so i’m keeping it. but i do plan on letting the seller know.
so now, as is normal for me lately, the painting that existed at the end of the day yesterday is totally different. but i’ve reached the end of my painting energy for today, and i’ll pick up again tomorrow morning. tomorrow is trash pick up day, plus i need to run into town for a few things, so i probably won’t get into it till about noon, which is not unusual for me.
calligraphic brush marks made this morning, deigned to be cut up & collaged to this or a different painting.
3:46 PM: today i stretched a new 32x36” primed portrait linen canvas and started celebration 21. as always, it’s way too early to tell, but it’s definitely an interesting beginning. as with celebration 20, i’d like to keep it fresh and spare, withj lots of unpainted white canvas.
DETAIL of a 47x56” creek painting from 2000, in oil on linen, hanging in our living room
7:42 AM: these were made by my friend joe about 10 years ago and he brought them to my studio for me to paint, after which he fired them.
spanish creek, 16x24cm.
3:16 pm: i’ve been waiting for the mosquito infestation to die down so i could get back into my 2-3X a week plein air routine, and today was the day. a tad oin the hot side, but no mosquitoes!
so i made 2 watercolors. what’s interesting about them is that they’re a departure from previous creek watercolors coloristically, particularly #1, where we see the influence the yellows and pinks i used on my most recent oil: celebration 20. looking at it sitting on my table, adjacent to last years plein air creek watercolors, it almost looks as if it were done by a different artist, except of course for the movement of the marks, which are unmistakably tarlow.
8/4/24 creek watercolor 2, 16x24cm.
