detail of an ano kato painting in progress; this one based on photos i shot at the metropolitan museum in nyc
3:51 PM: today i gazed critically at the 138 watercolors and watercolor/collages i’ve made over recent months. you who are regular visitors to this site have followed this process. today something different happened. i looked at some older work, and saw that what i’m currently doing, while it may be more evolved from what i was doing a few years ago, it’s basically the same dance of creek inspired biomorphic shapes. and when i went back to 2015 while scrolling through the more than 34,000 photos in my i-cloud files, i saw in many of them the same use of collaged elements breaking up the image in a fashion not unlike what i’m currently up to.
i noticed i was becoming a little tired, even bored with this path. i felt a longing for the excitement i felt making my ano kato series of paintings: you’ll find that page under WORKS, above, or copy this link & visit the page. https://www.philiptarlow.com/best-left-unsaid
i have an appetite for revisiting that spirit of views from above, which i’ve always been crazy about. ano kato, by the way, means topsy turvey in modern greek. so i’m thinking i might start down that road, possibly starting out with small gouaches on paper and progressing to mid-sized oils in the 36” range. i have a feeling that what i’ve learned making all those watercolors will show up big time in this proposed new work: looser, freer more overtly painterly brush strokes and more boldness in the colors i use, departing form the mostly earth tones found in the ano kato series.
BELOW: on the top row: one of the ano kato paintings in process and, on the right, examining the completed painting on the easel in my studio, shot in 2015. the subject matter is derived from photos i took in MOMA.
on the bottom row: a detail of one of my gaze series paintings in process, and on the right, another gaze series painting in process, showing my use of collage, including pieces of maps.
