painting “argolid” over "PT with 2 paintings" & transforming “self portrait with 2 paintings” into “rhyton” 24x26” /  by Philip Tarlow

rhyton, 28x24” oil on linen

1:35 PM: RHYTON: i had intended to start a brand new painting this afternoon, but after gazing at self portrait with 2 paintings, 24x28” for a few days, since i created it 2 days ago, i decided that it, too had to go. so i worked over it with the same blue oil pigment i used this morning for the new argolid. confused? thats ok; if & when you encounter them in person, i think you’ll understand.

rhyton is the name for mycenean terracotta libation vessels. this one, in the shape of a bull, is from pseira, in eastern crete, 1500-1200 BC.

RHYTON terracotta drinking vessel in the shape of a bull

ARGOLID 36x38” oil on linen, painted over PT with 2 Paintings just an hour ago

11:59 AM: i was just going to ditch the painted over canvas i was working on today, but then i got into a blu mood, and went over most of it with blue, adding some red and darker blue lines on the edges. i had to shoot it on the table from above, so that the fresh paint wouldn’t run.

something indescribable happens for me when i’m paining over a painting that was mostly in my head, simply moving the brush where it wnats to go. but that previous tortured version had to be in order to burst forth with these unplanned gestures, revealing themselves as they occur. and naming themselves ARGOLID. ARGOLIS, by the way, was the foremost seat of power of the myceneans that dominated greece from around 1500 to 1200 BC

and now on to something new, on a completely fresh, blank quadruple primed linen canvas.

MYCENEAN terra cotta figurine , ca. 1550-1450 BC

pt with 2 paintings /  by Philip Tarlow

2:31 PM: i started pt with 2 paintings this morning, but i wasn’t happy with how it was evolving, so i scraped over it, painted into it a bit, and left it like this till tomorrow.

self portrait with 2 paintings, day 1 /  by Philip Tarlow

self portrait with 2 paintings-1, 24x26”, oil on linen with collaged elements from an earlier painting beneath

3:35 PM: i started a new painting this afternoon, which is painted over and older whited out one. it’s 24x26” and, so far is a self portrait with 2 recent paintings. that’s it for today…i’m still dealing with my in floor heating thermostat and may have found a solution from a sweet tech person names menzot, a name i’ve never encountered till today. she walked me through a series of steps for setting the thermostat at 70F. so if i come in tomorrow morning and it’s 70 degrees, i’ll know it worked!

flipping "jazz 16" 90 degrees /  by Philip Tarlow

jazz 16 after i flipped it 90 degrees.

3:29 PM: yesterday while gazing at jazz 16 hanging in our bedroom, it occured to me/us that it would be a far more interesting painting if it were turned on it’s side. here’s the result.

to the right you see how it looked before the flip. it’s still a pretty interesting composition, but now i/we find it more compelling.

today was one of those rare days when i didn’t paint at all. i spent the whole morning trying to figure out how to adjust the thermostat in my studio. it’s impossibly complicated, and all the tech guys i spoke to agreed. rather than try and adjust it so that it’s set lower at night and goes up to 70F during the day, i just set it for a constant 70F …her it worked..i’ll know in the morning wheter or not it worked. it was way chilly in there today, and was snowing all day.

this is how jazz 16 looked before flipping it yesterday

continued work on KABUKI CREEK /  by Philip Tarlow

kabuki creek, 20x80” / 50.8 x 203.2 cm oil on linen

2:41 PM: and a bit more work on kabuki creek, including that siena i’m not sure about yet.

kabuki creek, 20x80” / 50.8 x 203.2 cm oil on linen

12:06 PM: this morning, and until a few minutes ago, i continued work on what used to be the original acropolis painting, which has become kabuki creek.

drawing from the considerable number of photos i’ve shot over the years of our local creeks, and from reproductions of tokugawa reimeikai’s handscrolls of women’s kabuki, ca. 1620’s-30’s, i’m creating a composition more suited to the 20x80”/ 50.8 x 203.2cm. dimensions of this canvas. i’ll see, following this brief break to post to my blog, whether there’s more to do. my juices start flowing and roiling when it involves rocks, branches and water.

rework of the original 80x20" acropolis musem /  by Philip Tarlow

acropolis 20x80” as it looked moments ago

1:52 PM: this painting has gone through many stages, and this was the most recent, done on october 27. today, as i gazed at it on my south studio wall, it wasn’t working at all. such a tall, narrow format: 80x20” is challenging, whether verical or horizontal. so today i’m giving it another go, this time as a horizontal.

while the most recent version you see here has some admirable passages, it simply doesn’t hold up. the viewer’s eye wanders up and down with no place to rest. i had condidered removing the walking plaid shirted figure towars the bottom, whose scale doesn’t match the other figures. but we’d still be faced with the same issue.

more work on “acropolis museum V” / Philip's Menorah /  by Philip Tarlow

acropolis museum V 35x37” oil on linen, as it looked at 1:30, following the work i did earlier

acropolis museum V as it looked before and after the work o did today

1:03 PM: after stretching by the creek this morning, i went back into acropolis museum V, which i had considered complete until today. i felt, for starters, that, while i loved that spare quality the painting had, the female figure of the jumping skateboarder needed more definition to liven up the compsition. for now i’ve left parts of her body unpainted, in keeping with the suggested but not fully defined other figures.

one thing i’ve learned from the masters is that going back to figures you’ve painted a number of times gives you more and more freedom in painting them. like, oh yeah, i remember that arm; that thigh; that hair. and this gives you the ability to create a shorthand for the figures, the architecture,…whatever. and, although they’ve never met off the canvas, they love interacting with one another.

i keep pondering how to title my upcoming solo houston exhibition in april, and have a list of possibilities. the latest if figurative-ISH.

7:31 AM: i drew this yesterday on my iPhone. We don’t celebrate Hannukah, but a friend published photos of a variety of Menorah designs from around the world, and i thought i’d do my part.

stretching "Acropolis Museum III" /  by Philip Tarlow

3:10 PM: today is a dark, cloudy cold day, with periods of light snow.

since i wasn’t in a painting mood anyway, i devoted the day to assembling the stratcher bars i had ordered. so far, i’ve streched one of the new acropolis museum paintings: acropolis museum III, which you see here on the left, hanging on my west wall.

"acropolis museum V", day 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

6:01 PM: late this afternoon, on our way to take our afternoon walk, mikela rightly pointed out that the gren rectangle on the lower left was screwing up he composition. so i rubbed it out as much as possible, and i’ll do a better job in the morning.

12:54 PM: this morning i continued work on the new acropolis museum V. i had the intention of leaving more white space than in the previous one. what’s happening is that over a period of months, the figures i was most interested in using in these paintings became a group of a dozen or more. some were included in the photos i had shot back in march at the acropolis museum; others were from earlies photos, shot here in colorado. and still others, like the walking guy with the plaid shirt, where shot from our tv screen.

one thing that’s different here so far is that there are no layers, no white-overs, no scraping, as was the case with acropolis museum III. so will it remain this way? i’ve learned from decades of experience to stop working when i have no more juice, so that’s it for today. less is more…