starting celebration 25, 24x32" /  by Philip Tarlow

celebration 25, 24x32” oil on portrait linen, as she looked at the end of my painting day today

2:05 PM: this morning i started painting celebration 25, 24x32”

2 days ago i stretched this portrait linen canvas and applied a broken italian sienna ground, leaving some of hte white canvas showing. my intention in doing that was to incorporate those resulting white shapes into the composition. if you can imagine the two figures i’ve painted thus far on a plain white or sienna ground, you’ll see what i mean.

the figure on the left was inspired by one of the 2024 paris olympics skateboarders; the one on the right derives from a series of photos i shot some years ago of students in one of the schools we were working with at the time. this girl is sitting on the floor next to the lockers, at work on her laptop.

i have no predetermined plan when i start the paintings in this series; rather, i follow the energy in the moment, which i know may sound kind of new age, but i can’t say it any other way. i now have a menagerie of figures in various settings; mostly architectural, and before staring work on a new painting i browse through them and pick out 3 or 4 that grab me.

and at any moment, they may be painted over. as the 19th c. french artist Roussel'‘s son in law Jacques Salomon said:

“beware, never let Roussel retouch one of his works…you won’t recognize it…from the sea, he makes a field of wheat!”

completing & signing celebration 19 /  by Philip Tarlow

the completed celebration 19, 20x38” oil & collage on portrait linen

1:05 PM: my first glance let me know all is good, although i did add a bit more red to the vertical line on the right edge of the composition before signing and dating it. so it’s now available for sale, price upon request.

it will be included in my next solo show, date and location to be announced.

continued work on "celebration 19" /  by Philip Tarlow

celebration 19, 20x38” oil & collage on portrait linen, as she looked at the end of my painting day

2:56 PM: today i think i may reached resolution with celebration 19. i collaged some cut up pieces of recent quill drawings, along with a piece of a map of paris. the blue of the sea in that map enlivens the entire composition and, along with a few blue stripes on the top & bottom right and the pink strip i added yesterday to the right edge of the painting, allow her to sing her song.

now that i’ve finally reached this place of aliveness and delicate balance with this painting, i’m looking at her brothers & sisters hanging to the right and left of her, as well as below her, and getting hits on what i might do that would provide them with a similar subtelty. do i dare go back into them, or start something new on the 38x38” canvas i stretched yesterday? stya tuned!

more work this morning on "celebration 19" /  by Philip Tarlow

celebration 19 as she looked at 3pm

3:11 PM: after a few more tweaks, here’s what she looks like

celebration 19, 20x38" oil & collage on portrait linen,  as she looked following the work i did this morning

12:42 PM: my all important first glance at the changes i made yesterday to celebration 19 let me know more needed to be done. my eye got confused and lost in the multitude of marks that were not essential.

so this morning, with my fresh energy and despite a poor nights sleep last night, i dove back in with fervor. here’s where she’s at as of noon. in poetic terms, i’d say she’s fluxotonic.

returning to celebration 19 /  by Philip Tarlow

4:39 PM: i started out thinking i was just going to lighten the upper part of celebration 19, and ended up spending the whole day working on it. here’s how it looked moments ago, and below is how it looked before i started working on it.

new collage / a new drawing from our trip to salida / yesterday’s sunset sky /  by Philip Tarlow

untitled collage, 12x18.5” created just now

12:45 PM: i just made a collage using cutouts of calligraphic marks i made last month and was intending to use in my new paintings.

9:44 AM: yesterday we drove to salida so i could get my right eye checked out. it turned out to be nothing; likely the after effects of an ocular migraine i had the previous night. as always, i had my sketch book and colored pencils with me, and made a couple of drawings in the waiting room; this is one of the woman sitting in front of us, at work on her computer as she conversed with friends sitting adjacent.

so now i’m about to get to work on a new painting, using the exquisite extra fine artfix portrait linen, which was delivered a few days ago.

as happens on an almost daily basis, we witnessed an extraordinary sunet sky yesterday, which you can see in this photo i shot from our west facing living room windows.

the east wall of my studio with recent paintings, as it looked this afternoon

view towars mt. blanca this afternoon at 5pm, with one of my creek oil paintings below the windows

starting celebration 24, 16x20” / celebration 23 tweaked /  by Philip Tarlow

celebration 24, 16x20” as she looked at the end of my painting day

3:39 PM: this afternoon i started work on a new painting: celebration 24. it’s smaller than the previous paintings in this series, measuring just 16x20.” the reddish ground was painted at the same time as celebration 23, so it’s the exact same color: italian pompeii red mixed with a little titanium white.

the white canvas i left creates a great counterpoint to the pompeii red and playfully interacts with the shapes of the two tennis players.

celebration 23, 32x36” as she looked following the tweaks i just made to the lower right portion

1:38 PM: the area on the lower right of the composition wasn’t working, so i went over it and added a female basketball player viewed from above. the figures in this painting don’t jump out at you; rather they integrate fully into the composition as a whole, which is what i strive for in this evolving figurative abstraction series. moreover, if you’re familiar with the recently completed 2024 paris olympics, you’ll pick up on the references, albeit subtle.

celebration 23-next phase / figurative vs pure abstraction /  by Philip Tarlow

celebration 23, 32x36”, oil on portrait linen, as she looked at the end of my painting day today.

3:20 PM: i continued work on celebration 23 until just a few minutes ago. i’m cooked for the day and will see where it’s at in the morning.

celebration 23, 32x36” as she looked moments ago

i worked on celebration 23 this afternoon. right now, it has some very vibrant colors and doesn’t have that somewhat muted, pastely look of the others in this series.

untitled, october , 2017, 38x36” oil on linen

10:15 AM: this is one of the paintings in my collection, made in october of 2017, in my crestone studio. it reflects my mood at the time. it has some interesting similarities to my recent celebraton 22, which however ocntains figures.

i think at that time, 7 years ago, i was exploring abstraction and slowly began discovering that figurative abstraction is my true path.

so lets see where celebration 23 goes today; i’m about to dive in!

celebration 23 as she looks at the start of my painitng day

celebration 22, 32x36” oil & collage on portrait linen

1999 gouache of the Sangres /  by Philip Tarlow

this 1999 gouache on paper, 6 1/2 x 8 3/4” sits in our kitchen. it was a time when we were relatively new to crestone, and i was making lots of small paintings like this one of the landscape surrounding our house in the foothills of the sangres. judging by the amounts of snow remaining on the peaks, this one was likely made in the spring.