Observation and Childhood Reverie

-











Here's one of my newest oil paintings. It is titled The Sea and it's small, 6 1/2 x 13". Working at that size allows for lots of playful experimentation. Even so, I worked on it for months.

The origin is a plein air vine charcoal drawing I did four years ago of the Porcupine Islands up on Mt. Desert Island in Acadia National Park in Maine (see post below). That drawing got put away for a couple of years- long enough for my original impression of the place to fade. Once I unearthed the drawing again a few years later, my imagination saw it in a different light. What had been Maine islands recalled to me my childhood in upstate New York where I spent huge chunks of time gazing at the then to me ocean-like Lake Ontario. Children often are the closest of us to the art spirit. Carl Jung thought so.

And now in my sixties, I find reconsidering my on-the-spot drawings through the remembered eye of my childhood can chart the best road forward. As the oil progressed, some of the specifics of the place evolved away from observable fact to create a new place more in keeping with my state of mind. Most of my best paintings are like that.

Now I'm working on a larger studio version on this image. 

The original drawing is now on display as part of the seven museum national touring exhibition
Unbroken Thread: The Art of Philip Koch currently at Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis, MA through August 16.

Popular posts from this blog

Edward Hopper- Looking Out

-
Image
Edward Hopper, Cape Cod Morning,   oil on canvas, 1950,  Smithsonian American Art Museum Above is a painting I've loved for some forty years. I'm fortunate to be able to see it often as it lives in the SAAM in Washington, D.C. . This painting contains a real clue to Hopper's art. I visit there often as it helps me learn how to see better. Often writers will talk about the loneliness of Hopper's paintings or how his figures feel isolated and rarely interact with one another. While there is some of that in Hopper's painting, it begs a question- why is Hopper's art so widely loved? I'd offer a couple of answers. First, he's one of the most talented painters and was able to invent visual equivalents for strong emotions we humans experience as we live our lives.  He saw color combining in unexpected ways and offered up generous servings of the most delicious color combinations. Yum. Usually, as in the SAAM's Cape Cod Morning above, when he paints
Read more

Ever Wonder What's in the Next Room in Hopper's Rooms by the Sea?

-
Image
Edward Hopper, Rooms by the Sea , oil on canvas, 1951, Yale University Art Gallery One of Edward Hopper's best known paintings is Rooms by the Sea that was based on his studio in Truro, MA. Its mysterious doorway leading to the ocean captivates our eye.  Did you ever wonder what the room through the painting's other doorway looked like? Last week a collector asked to see some of the drawings I made during my residencies in the historic studio so I photographed this drawing. Philip Koch,  Edward Hopper's Truro Bedroom: Afternoon  Sunlight , vine charcoal, 9 x 12 inches, 2012. To make the drawing I set up my French easel in the bedroom Hopper shared with his wife Jo for the three decades they lived in the studio. One of the room's two small closets centers the drawing. At the right is the doorway leading into Hopper's big painting room with his studio easel in the distance.  What inspired me to make the drawing were the intense patterns the afternoon sunlight made ove
Read more

Edward Hopper's Poetry of Empty Rooms

-
Image
I've just been invited by Rachael Solomon who is the Program Director of the  Edward Hopper House Art Center in Nyack, NY to have a mini solo show in one of their galleries.. We'll be showing some of my paintings of the interior of Edward Hopper's Cape Cod studio where I've had the great pleasure of enjoying 13 residencies since 1983. The Edward Hopper House Art Center is the boyhood home of the famous American realist artist. So much of what Hopper became stemmed from his early years there. So I'm excited to do the exhibit. It will be coming up in March through May of 2012.   Hopper didn't teach. Yet I learned more about how to become a good painter by studying his work than by any other single thing. Art after all is visual. Words, even beautifully and aptly spoken can get in the way. And Hopper was legendarily tactiturn. I suspect had someone asked Hopper how to paint an empty room, his terse reply would have been "Don't!".  Above is one of h
Read more