1st day back: girl with a glass /  by Philip Tarlow

girl with a glass, oil & collage on linen,8 1/2 x 11”- day 1

2:46 PM: after driving an hour each way to alamosa this mornig to have the bone graft/extraction site checked by my dentist, i went to the studio for the first time since the procedure last friday. it felt so good to be back! but i was feeling tired from the drive & had some elevated pain in the area. i wanted to do something, so i took an older small (8x10) unstretched painting on linen and worked into it with oil & collage before returning to the house & lying down. so i’m typing this from bed, while the unending political coverage plays on the tv.

the photo i worked from was shot about 5 years ago at an outdoor event with high school kids. there was a freshness & innocence about this girl holding a glass of water that moved me, and transformed this everyday moment into a timeless experience. i collaged two pieces; a map of australia, which appears on the upper right, and a bold series of marks made with a bamboo quill in ink on paper. i worked into it with a fan brush loaded with oil paint & oil sticks, and then scraped with one of my palette knives.

at this stage of my career, roads i have travelled, the development and ripening of my mark making merge with the influence of the great masters i’ve studied and integrate into my current work. there are references to: diebenkorn, matisse and dekooning. can you recognize them?

BELOW: top row left: dekooning: montauk II, right: diebenkorn: ocean park #72

bottom row left: matisse: the goldfish, right: diebenkorn: interior with vire of the ocean

BELOW: RECENT PAINTINGS OF MINE

Genesis /  by Philip Tarlow

genesis on 10-19-22 3pm.

ecole des beaux arts, versaille

10.19AM: today i’m staying home, resting & putting ice on my swollen cheek.

i’m taking the opportunity to organize my laptop desktop, amongst other things. i just came across this work in progress titled genesis. it’s inspired by this photo of the ecole des beaux arts, versailles.

it’s one of those paintings i wish i had left alone at this early stage.

no studio today due to post-op swelling & pain /  by Philip Tarlow

6:12 PM: yesterday i went to the dentist to have a molar extracted. it had had a root canal, and was causing a bone damage & gum infection surrounding the tooth. the predictable effects of the surgery started showing up once the anaesthetic starting wearing off, and ramped up from then on. the pain & swelling is predictable following an extraction & bone graft, but you can’t really imagine it until it happens. i’m on antibiotics for the next week, and can only have liquids or very soft food.

so no studio today! and possibly tomorrow as well. then monday i have to drive back to my dentist in alamosa, which is 50 miles each way, to have the site checked, so no studio monday….we’ll see about tuesday.

often these breaks away from the studio actually benefit my work, allowing me to take some distance & re-evaluate recent work.

in the mean time, i’ll revisit two little paintings in gouache on paper, one of which has collaged pieces of maps, that i made back in april for my newborn grand daughter in athens. they now hang on her bedroom wall.

starting swirling creek II /  by Philip Tarlow

3:46 PM: swirling creek II has gone through a number of stages today. BELOW are two of those stages, 2:20pm on the left and 3:34 on the right.; more to follow on my next day in the studio, which should be saturday, if i feel up to it. i’m having a molar extracted by my dentist tomorrow morning, and it takes a few days for the initial discomfort to subside. we’re hoping that alleviates the gum infection surrounding that tooth, which had a root canal 2 years ago & has been painful ever since.

but if i feel strongly about continuing work on this one, i may just take a few tylenol & get back to work saturday morning!

by the way, the bit of blue sky on the upper left is a collaged bit of a map. i’ve had difficulty collaging paper onto still wet (or dry for that matter) oil paint, so today i tried something new, using my neo megilp oil painting medium. it’ll take a while to fully dry,and we’ll see if it works in a few days or so.

1:27 PM: i started work on another 17x21” canvas today, painting over a previous one. it’s titled swirling creek II. i’ll post updates throughout the afternoon.

looking back to april, 2022 /  by Philip Tarlow

last april i showed paintings from my i fly series at space gallery in denver. this is one of the paintings from that show. the series was inspired largely by the celebrations following the 2020 tokyo olympics, but this particular image also has a tennis player and the outlines of an ancient greek image of a bull. the checkerboard patterning can be found in many of the works in this series.

adding collage and new marks to yesterday's plein air watercolors /  by Philip Tarlow

11-7-22 creek watercolor/collage 1, 4x14 1/2” watercolor & collage on arches watercolor paper

11:23 AM: once i returned to the house from the creek yesterday, and after gazing at the two watercolors for a while, i decided they both needed more work. so this morning, i added some new marks and collaged pieces to them both throughout the entire day. here are the before (left) and after (right) images:

plein air today /  by Philip Tarlow

today was plein air day. at 1pm i went out to the creek, where i made 2 watercolors while sitting, literally, one foot from the creek. and then at 2:30 mikela and i took our walk up the trail adjacent to the creek and i made a small colored pencil drawing at our stopping point about 1/2 hour up the trail.

pompeiian reverie final / 5 recent paintings /  by Philip Tarlow

BELOW are 5 17x21” paintings i’ve made over the past few weeks, which will be paret of my march solo show in athens.

1:29 PM:yesterday afternoon before leaving the studio i made a few additions to pompeiian reverie I. here’s the final version.

pompeiian reverie I

working back into "pompeiian reverie I" /  by Philip Tarlow

2:24 PM: can’t seem to complete this one. here’s the latest iteration, which is a definite improvement. i removed the collaged map piece and lo, an octopus has appeared!

can i please move on to pompeiian reverie II?? it’s getting kinda late & we need to be at a meeting at 4, so this might be it for the day.

a few more tweaks before moving on to pompeiian reverie II.

if you compare this version with the one below, which i posted earlier today, the main difference you’ll find is in the upper central portion of the composition. i collaged a blue piece of map, then painted some blue marks on top of it.

in addition, i gave more light to the eye of the grey fish below.

pompeiian reverie I as it looked moments ago

12:36 PM: fresh from my magnificent morning massage, i went back in to pompeiian reverie I, after wiping out the human figures i had put in yesterday. they simply didn’t work at all in the composition.

so now, it’s all sea creatures, all the way. some are painted in, others just outlines, creating playful negative spaces in an already brim-full compositin. the greens i added yesterday on instinct, reallly work well, and balance out the domnant oranges and siennas. another good move, i believe, is the light blue i applied to the left portion yesterday.

so i’m liking it as is, and i’ll move on now to pompeiian reverie II, most of which i wiped out as well yesterday afternoon.

at work on 4 paintings today /  by Philip Tarlow

pompeiian reverie I after wiping out figures on top

4:41 PM: before leaving the studio, i made some changes to pompeiian reverie I & II. i realized, as i was preparing to walk out the door, that some of the figures weren’t working. so, while the paint was still wet, i wiped them out. it looks kinda messy, but that will change tomorrow. if you scroll down & have a look at these two paintings before i wiped out the figures, you’ll likely see what i mean.

pompeiian reverie II after wiping out figures on top

pompeiian reverie I following today’s modifications

stage 1 of pompeiian reverie II, which i started today

3:02 PM: today, in addition to modifications to 11-1-22 swirling creek; pompeiian reverie and 12-2020 watercolor/collage, i started a new one: pompeiian reverie II which, while containing elements of the earlier version, jumps epochs from the 3rd C. BC to the 2020 tokyo olympic celebration. beneath the naked figures of the pompeiian mosaic are clothed revelers at the celebrations following the 2020 tokyo olympics, which i painted last year in a series of watercolors and oils.

as well today, i made some minor modifications to the area of white on the lower left corner of 11-1-22 swirling creek

11-1-22 swirling creek

12-2020 watercolor/collage

and finally, i modified the left portion of 12-2020 watercolor/collage, to which i made extensive changes yesterday. now, it bears little resemblence to the original 2020 plein air creekscape. but it’s a far better painting now, albeit an abstract one.