fear no more /  by Philip Tarlow

fear no more, 24x20” oil on portrait linen on day 1

1:38 PM: after cutting 3 more pieces of 24x20” portrait linen yesterday, i began a new series of 3 paintings titled fear no more. the early stage of this first in the series was inspired by photos i shot in an athenian museum. the visitors to the museum, as viewed from the balcony above, mingle with ancient marble statues of Godesses. i was gazing through a transparent surface with the black dotted patterning you see.

after doing my series of 3 dancing creek pieces, i felt myself longing for my views from above material, which i have a lot of. there’s something in that perspective that lights my fire.

i ran out of juice about 30 minutes ago, so i stopped here. to be continued tomorrow morning.

DETAIL

dancing creek lll and ll tweaks /  by Philip Tarlow

12:13 PM: this morning i added a seemingly small but compositionally significant mark to the composition, it’s on the very lower right, a dash of yellow.

and on dancing creek II, i added a collaged piece of quilll drawing on the lower left, balancing out the composition.

you can evaluate whether this make a difference to the overall composition in the before & after images BELOW.

dancing creek III, day 2 /  by Philip Tarlow

1:31 PM: new developments in dancing creek III include the introduction of red & yellow, as well as several collaged pieces of drawings. gazing now at I, II & III, they have an obvious relationship & a common theme: movement, joy, dancing. i’m taking a bit of a break & may go into town to do some food shopping, and i’ll see once i’m back what more, if anything, dancing creek III needs from me.

BELOW: dancing creek l, ll and lll

dancing creek III, 24x20” oil & collage on portrait linen, as she looked moments ago

dancing creek II completed /  by Philip Tarlow

3:12 PM: this afternoon i made a colored pencil and quill pen drawing on a piece of 20x40” paper,looking around the studio at mikela talking on the phone with a friend, the vermeer study to her left and jars of brushes.

afternoon drawing, 20x40” on paper

10:06 AM: upon entering my studio this morning, i cast that all important gaze at dancing creek II. it passed the test with flying colors, and am delcaring it complete. with the caveat that you never know!

abstracted realism as i like to call it, is a tricky business. if the descriptive factor, whether it be figures, landscape, or whatever takes precidence, the composition as a whole suffers. that’s one big reason why i introduced collaged elements yesterday. they tend to break up the predictability of, in this case, the figure, allow the composition as a whole to sing it’s song, as well as introducing some questions left to the viewer, like…what’s going on above his head? is that a cloud, perhaps a hat…or just a white form with calligraphic marks that breaks up the grey?

dancing creek II, 24x20” oil on portrait linen

dancing creek LL / prehistoric bison painting /  by Philip Tarlow

2:26 PM: i collaged a few cut out pieces of quill pen drawings i had made months ago, mainly to break up the predictability of subject matter and composition. as a result, although the dancing figure continues to be readable, he has integrated more with the composition as a whole and taken on a somewhat otherworldly, musical air.

dancing creek II , 24x20” following the collaging

dancing creek II , 24x20” following this mornings work

12:12 PM: dancing creek II has progressed in unexpected ways.

Bison cave painting, La grotte de Marsoulas , Haute-Garonne, Pyrénées, France . Discovered in 1897. 17 000 years old

dancing creek LL / dancing creek revised / moralis / rocks /  by Philip Tarlow

dancing creek II, 24x20” oil on portrait linen, at 2pm

1:47 PM: once i resolved dancing creek, i began work on dancing creek II, which has the same dimensions. my inspiration is coming from the same screen shot from our tv with a room full of dancers moving wildly to the music.

12:52 PM: the white space remaining after i took out the dark browns needed something, so i just went back into it.

dancing creek, 24x20” as it looked moments ago

11:52 AM: yesterday before leaving the studio and while the paint was still fresh, i took out the brown portion at the top. i think it’s way improved, so i’m starting a new one and will keep glancing at dancing creek to see if it’s really resolved as is or perhaps needs something more at the top of the composition.

moralis was one of the artists i knew during the 15 years i lived and painted in greece. i wouldn’t say i had a close relationship with him, but he was a dear friend of my then mother-in-law, the painter niki karagatsi.

i recall vividly the night he came to our appartment in athens for dinner. the conversation was riviting, and his simple humility very moving. a beautiful soul.

this is one of a series of colored drawings on paper he did in 1965, for the poems of the great greek poet, seferis.

i photographed these crestone conglomerates on our trail walk yesterday. these rocks, scattered along the trail, were formed about 1.8 BILLION years ago!! their unique forms, patterns and coloring deeply influence my painting.

dancing creek /  by Philip Tarlow

dancing creek, 24x20” oil on portrait linen, at the end of my painting day today

2:46 PM: today i started dancing creek, on one of the 3 24x20” extra fine linen cnavases i cut from the roll 2 days ago. this dancing figure with his arms passionately outstretched has been appearing in recent work. i captured the image from our tv screen, and for me he epitomizes the joy of moving ones body to music. there are no national boundaries here; moving to music is universal.

whereas in the previous works where he appears there are other figures in the space, here he’s the central and only figure. during my years in greece, i witnesses many scenes of dancers passionately and spontaneously moving to live rembmetika music, but they never entered the space of my paintings. it seems i wasn’t ready, although my mentor tsarouchis showed me the way, creating some of his greatest masterpieces incorporating sailors dancing to rembetika.

taiko, day 6 /  by Philip Tarlow

taiko, 22 1/2 x 30” mixed media & collage

10:19 AM: i did more work on taiko; there’s a lot more white breathing space, much of the composition is covered by semi-transparent white paper cut into biomorphic shapes. all but one of the taiko drummers are gone, leaving a largely non-representational composition.

all that came before on the previous 5 days has contributed to the current composition, providing a visual richness, frteshness and suggestiveness that could not have been established otherwise.

taiko," day 5 /  by Philip Tarlow

taiko , 22 1/2 x 30” as she looked moments ago following extensive work this morning

11:25 PM: this morning i made some critical additions and modifications, bringing taiko closer to completion. as you can see in the comparative photos below, the most significant change took place when i collaged over the dark bit on the lower left, which was a cutout of a photo of a taiko drummer. you will see many more improvements, such as the female drummer figure on the upper right and the black clad drummer seen from above in the center of the composition.