continued work on "dwell" / tweaks to “school hallway,” 78x26” /  by Philip Tarlow

this afternoon i started making tweaks to paintings for my aspen show. this one is in my ano kato series, titled school hallway 1. i felt it needed to pop a little more, so i added some lights in some areas. BELOW are the before (left) & after shots.

most noticeable is the blue book to the right of the seated girl on top. a few of the more subtle tweaks are: the face of the girl on top, as well as the greens of her jacket; the whites in the sneakers of the figure to the left, the white headband on the girl below as well as the whites of her shoes….

dwell as it looked moments ago following continued work this morning

1 PM: this morning i continued my modifications to dwell, 17x80”

this may be the most narrow composition i’ve created. the trick is to have it read as one integrated composition. if you look at the right and left crops BELOW, each half of this composition works by itself. i’m not yest certain about the composition as a whole though. it’s certainly better than it was…

returning to "dwell," 17x80" /  by Philip Tarlow

dwell 17x80” after todays modifications

3:32 PM: this morning i continued preparing paintings for the aspen show, taping the edges, selecting the ones in frames under glass, etc.

i’ve been casting glances at dwell for weeks now, ever since i last worked on it, july 7. and finally, today, it’s turn has come. i did a fair amount, going over it with a thin layer of pinkish yellowish oils, then doing my usual scraping, blotting, rubbing, after which i began painting into it. it’s not singing yet, but if you listen carefully, you can hear some faint chirps. of course with my tinnitus, i hear ringing constantly, but that’s very different from singing!

that very wide expanse of canvas needed breaking up and, even after what i did today, it still does.

BELOW: dwell before & after todays modifications

handstand loses detail, gains melody /  by Philip Tarlow

1:50 PM: today it was the turn of handstand to join my latest paintings in losing detail and gaining melody. what do i mean by this? just have a look.

rather than being drawn into the figures, your eye now experiences a harmony of forms, colors and light with no beginning, no end; the stady movement of time reflected in these two circus figures is arrested in the midst of a melody. and it is that melody, which each viewer will hear differently that, more than anything, reflects my current state of being.

there’s no short cut to this place. i have to make one of these realist paintings containing figures without looking forward to the moment when the inspiration to transform them comes over me.

tricky.

but, after decades of making realist paintings in greece and during the period following my return to the states, i woke up to my essential artistic self. without making the realist work wrong, and after studying the masters i’ve always learned from, i recognized what it is that those masters i love have in common.

handstand a sit looked at 2pm today, following melodications

"handstand" gets a blue floor and a heavenly green /  by Philip Tarlow

ABOVE: handstand before and after the heavenly green light on his trousers

handstand, 72x28” after introducing the heavenly light green

3:26 PM: somehow creating that blue floor this morning inspired me to do more. the changes are mostly to the juggler, whose face is now more defined and whose red jacket & green trousers have lightened. i especially like what happened with his trousers. that green, especially when you see it in person, is heavenly. have you ever seen me say that a passage in one of my paintings is heavenly? well, you just heard it. heavenly, i tell you. good enough to eat!

BELOW: handstand before & after the introduction of the blue floor

2:22 PM: the red background seemed like too much when i gazed at handstand this morning upon entering my studio. i went back & looked at the photos i had been using & saw that, on one of the photos that included the juggler, there was a blue band across the bottom of the image. i liked the idea of introducing a light blue as a way of breaking up all that pinkish red, and as a compliment to it.

tweaks to tokyo drummer & handstand /  by Philip Tarlow

3:34 PM: today i returned to the two 72x28” paintings on grey tinted linen, inspired by the 2020 tokyo olympics and the celebration following that event.

yesterday i made major modifications to handstand, which was orginally painted back in june. i painted over the dominant grey with a rose/pink, which really transformed the painting big time, for the better i think. today i went back into it, working mostly on the hands and forearms of the female acrobat doing the handstand.

my focus on the drummer was the blue area between him and his drum, adding oval areas of lighter blue which mirror the darker oval shapes in the blue on the upper left of the composition.

as well, i added sime white highlights to the upper part of his garment, as well as flesh toned highlights on his exposed foot and his face.

BELOW: tokyo drummer and handstand before (left) and after today’s tweaks

major modification to "handstand" 72x28" /  by Philip Tarlow

1:53 PM: following the changes i made to recent paintings over the past week, today it was the turn of handstand. i’ve been gazing at it every day where it hangs, on the south wall of my studio. ti was painted on a linen canvas over which i had applied a dark grey ground at least 10 years ago. since then, it’s been sitting in my studio loft, where i discovered it back in june. i made two tall, narrow paintings and this is one of them. until today, the grey ground was very visible, and i began feeling it was detracting from the two figures of the acrobat doing a handstand and the juggler in the red jacket. they are both inspired by the celebratory events immediately following the 2020 tokyo olympics.

in a little while mikela and i have to attend a meeting about preserving the land here in crestone/baca, so i’ll continue this post later or tomorrow morning. until then, have a look at the before & after photos BELOW and see what you think.

re-visiting the red door, 38x40" /  by Philip Tarlow

today i reworked the red door, 38x40”

3:24 PM: following the changes i made to ano kato 50 over the past few days, mikela stopped by on her way to school in monte vista & was very enthusiastic about ano kato 50, but when we both looked at the red door, which was on the same wall a few feet away, it seemed to us both that it needed more work.

so after she left, i went over the entire painting with that pinkish color i’ve been using lately, and then scraped it to get off the excess solvent & started selectively rubbing into it using an old washcloth. i revealed the two figures, the red door & the plant on the left, then added some diagonal lines in black oil stick inspired by one of my views from above photos of the acropolis museum in athens. architectural structure is often my go-to way of dividing up the space in a composition. in this case, while the underlying bits of an earlier painting remain, those black diagonal lines interspersed with round electric light bulbs allow us to make visual sense of those traces of earlier compositions, while allowing the eye to focus on the two figures.

BELOW: the red door before today’s modifications is on the left.

final tweaks to ano kato 50 /  by Philip Tarlow

ano kato 50 FINAL STATE TODAY

1:54 PM: i had thought ano kato 50 was resolved. but when i came in this morning, i realized it needed to pop just a bit more. so while the thin layer of pinkish color i used to paint thinly over it a few days ago was still somewhat wet, i took a washcloth dipped in solvent and wiped into a few areas that needed to be revealed so they could act as “popping agents,” allowing some of the underlying vibrant colors to be stratigically revealed. examples: the black of the paddle handle beneath the red head’s hand; the shadow on the neck of the paddler on the left and the dark blue upper band on his bathing suit, as well as some of the white frothy bubbles in the river water. so are we done? YES!

since i discovered and photographed these paddlers, i’ve included them, in one way or another, in numerous paintings, both oils on canvas and watercolor/gouache/collage on paper. so who are they and what do they represent? first of all, they are forms in space. they are headed somewhere. on a voyage. they transport me beyond my familiar spaces and boundaries.

BELOW: BEFORE (LEFT) and after today’s tweaks

she starts to sing / STARTING ANO KATO 61 /  by Philip Tarlow

ano kato 61, stage 1

4:09 after completing work on ano kato 50, i strated painting over one of the less interesting motion series paintings.

ano kato 50 following this morning’s transformations

11:55 AM: this morning i had to take care of a few logistics: re-shooting 8/2/2021 creek oil. 26x62 in. for the print i’m having made in denver; requesting a backup night guard identical to the one i had made in may, which fits perfectly & ordering some materials i need for the upcoming aspen exhibition.

once i completed that & had my little road talk with mikela as she drove to the schools, i re-engaged with ano kato 50.

i’ve been feeling over the past few days that it was becoming far to specifically descriptive, but after all that work i was hesitant to paint over it.

finally about an hour ago i took the leap. i mixed up a rose/pinkish color, went over the entire painting with it, then scraped into it & blotted with paper towels, which leaves those cool telltale little dots from the patterning on the towels. when i hung it back on the wall, it just looked like a dull version of what it was before. then i went in with an old, very substantial washcloth & rubbed a few select areas, alllowing some of the vibrant colors underneath to come through.

the clincher was when i added a light blue stripe on the left, and a green shape next to it, following the curve of the skiff. and lo, she started to sing! i’ll have to sit with it and ask what she thinks comes next, if anything.

but here’s the real question: do i really have to plow through all this realist bullshit to get to this point? i already know the answer…i’m just sayin’.

next stage of ano kato 50 /  by Philip Tarlow

ano kato 50 on 8/23/22 4pm

3:50 PM: we walked up the trail this morning, so i got a bit of a late start. we saw 7 people on the trail; the most we’ve ever seen. just one more indication of how much crestone/baca are growing.

in the earlier stages of this current painting, i was, as always, tempted to leave it with one of the two figures just sketched in. i’m glad i decided to keep going with it. it has a richness beyond the numerous other variations of this theme of 2 paddlers on the river in alamosa. as was the case yesterday, my focus was on the right portion of the composition: the red head, the skiff & the river water.

i’m definitely going to continue tomorrow, and likely for a few more days after that, until it sings it song in a full throated way.

BELOW: yesterday’s stage and today’s (right)