this drawing in colored pencil was made during one of our early morning trail walks, on july 10th. one could say it epitomizes my passion for drawing and painting our creek. when i look back at the many hundreds of drawings and paintings in colored pencil, gouache and oil. all have the elements usually referred to in the art world as painterly. this is a description of that quality i found online…
”A painting may be described as being painterly when the illusion of form is created by utilizing colors, strokes, textures and any other techniques unique to the art of painting, rather than a linear method involving skillful drawing.”
BELOW: are 3 examples of the painterly in my recent work. on the upper left is a detail of one of my gaze paintings. next to it on the right is a detail of a plein air painting of the creek. bottom left: a detail of a painting form my sound of a flute series and bottom left: i am at work on one of my 2020 watercolors series. they illustrate, far better than words could, what is meant by painterly.
more afternoon thunderstorms roll in, with a corner of my studio on the right
i added images to my new carbondale dropdown menu, for visitors to my exhibition to get a better idea of my world and the process involved in the creation of these paintings. click on carbondale on the upper menu bar or copy and paste the link below.
https://philip-tarlow.squarespace.com/config/pages/505103ebe4b0b2bc7caf0fb8
1:50 PM yesterday towards the end of the day i made an unexpected modification to sparse reflections, one of my sound of a flute series of paintings. because i haven’t painted in oil for months due to my shoulder injury, it was a shock to squeeze oil paint from a tube and begin using it, as well as the oil sticks i had been using on the paintings in this series.
RIGHT: a detail of sparse reflections. the blue-green color on either side of the waterfall is new. i was waiting till this morning to determine whether or not this totally unexpected re-work was successful, especially since the light was poor with the onset of yesterday afternoons thunderstorms. so i was very pleasantly surprised to see that, not only were my additions successful, they actually made this a far better painting, setting off the blue of the sky and the greens of the trees and the pinks, and allowing the eye to roam more purposefully about the painting. as well, the slight darkening of the greys surrounding the figures makes them more of an important and meaningful element in the composition.