celebration 23-next phase / figurative vs pure abstraction /  by Philip Tarlow

celebration 23, 32x36”, oil on portrait linen, as she looked at the end of my painting day today.

3:20 PM: i continued work on celebration 23 until just a few minutes ago. i’m cooked for the day and will see where it’s at in the morning.

celebration 23, 32x36” as she looked moments ago

i worked on celebration 23 this afternoon. right now, it has some very vibrant colors and doesn’t have that somewhat muted, pastely look of the others in this series.

untitled, october , 2017, 38x36” oil on linen

10:15 AM: this is one of the paintings in my collection, made in october of 2017, in my crestone studio. it reflects my mood at the time. it has some interesting similarities to my recent celebraton 22, which however ocntains figures.

i think at that time, 7 years ago, i was exploring abstraction and slowly began discovering that figurative abstraction is my true path.

so lets see where celebration 23 goes today; i’m about to dive in!

celebration 23 as she looks at the start of my painitng day

celebration 22, 32x36” oil & collage on portrait linen

1999 gouache of the Sangres /  by Philip Tarlow

this 1999 gouache on paper, 6 1/2 x 8 3/4” sits in our kitchen. it was a time when we were relatively new to crestone, and i was making lots of small paintings like this one of the landscape surrounding our house in the foothills of the sangres. judging by the amounts of snow remaining on the peaks, this one was likely made in the spring.

celebration 22, day 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

celebration 22, 32x36” oil & collage on portrait linen, at 2:30 PM

BELOW: celebration 22 at 11 am (left) and 3:25 pm

1:02 PM: i got to the studio unusually early today: 8:30. so i’ve been painting celebration 22 for over 4 hours now. it’s esentially a different painting now, but interestingly, does feature the same leaping gymnast from the paris olympics who appeared in the very first version, which you can see in yesterday’s post.

CELEBRATOIN 22, DAY 1 / JAZZ series painting hanging in our house /  by Philip Tarlow

celebration 22 32x36” oil on portrait linen, as she looked at the end of my painting day today

3:46 PM: i whited over what i painted this morning, and this is the current state of celebration 22. see ya tomorrow!

celebration 22, 32x36” oil on portrait linen, was started today, thus far inspired by the 2024 paris olympics

2:42 PM: this morning i started painting celebration 22, 32x36”

8:38 AM: this is a detail of one of my jazz series paintings hanging in our house, 80x19” oil on linen.

celebration 21 goes olympic /  by Philip Tarlow

celebration 21, 32x36” oil & collage on portrait linen at the end of my painting day

3 PM: i shot some photos of the 2024 paris olympics from the tv screen last night and promptly used them in a painting aafter whiting over the one i did yesterday. painting into the still wet white oil paint gives a certain quality which would be impossible to create otherwise. it also gave me a way to eliminate that annoying yellow tone on this portrait linen, which i’m in the process of getting replaced.

so this was one of the guys who did those hard to believe moves on one hand, twirling and bending his body as though it were a piece of liquorice!

celebration 21 transforms (again)/ 1999, entrance to the Andros monastery /  by Philip Tarlow

celebration 21 32x36” oil & collage on portrait linen at 3:45 pm today

2:17 PM: this is probably the 3rd or maybe 4th time i’ve painted over what i did the previous day. this time it was with yellow. i worked back into it, introducing 2 large female figures, one of which is wearing a red garment. the black outlining creates a boldness surpassing it’s celebration series

entrance to panachrandou monastery, andros 1999, 22x23” gouache on paper

12:10 PM: in 1999 i made a series of paintings based on my visits to the Panachrandou Monastery in the moutains of Andros, in the Cycladic islands. this one, which was among the over 100 paintings returned to me from Gremillion Gallery in Houston after it closed, measures 22x23” and is in gouache on paper.

celebration 21, day 4 /  by Philip Tarlow

celebration 21, 32x36”, oil & collage on portrait linen, as she looked at the end of my painting day today

2:11 PM: yesterdays version was interesting, but too specific and descriptive. ok, so there’s a girl doing a handstand and thbeginnings of a bird…more and more, i’m learning to integrate my passion for painting figures in motion; for creekscapes with pure, painterly marks, giving the viewer space for his/her own creation of a painting. the newly collages calligraphic marks on paper contribute greatly to this integration. they were deliberately placed over more descriptive areas of the composition.

this is leading me towards revisiting, in this spirit, some recent paintings i had considered resolved. we’ll see…

celebration 21, day 3 /  by Philip Tarlow

celebration 21, 32x36” oil & collage on portrait linen at the end of my painting day today

2:53 PM: i took celebration 21 to the next level today. i collaged a piece of paper with some calligraphy in the central area of the composition, and began adding two birds inspired by an ancient roman mosaic. i like what happened; that said, it needs more work to reach resolution.

being in my studio almost every day, as opposed to the old days when we were travelling extensively to lead seminars and do consulting, home for maybe 2 weeks then off again. the resulting continuity i find priceless!

the start of the 2 birds

the paper with calligraphy i collaged is on upper left