An Artist Playing Ping Pong

-

Philip Koch, Forest Pool, oil on panel, 15 x 20", 2008

Above is an oil done completely from imagination in the studio. Over the years I've done many paintings on location deep in forest interiors. And memories of those experiences percolate through my mind as I work "out of my head." The beauty of working this way is you can move your shapes around like pieces on a chessboard, plotting out whatever strategy feels best to you. But to make it work, one needs to know the structure of trees, water, rocks and sky like the back of one's hand. As John Singer Sargeant used to say, the thing that separates accomplished painters from novice artists is miles of used up canvas.


Philip Koch, Monhegan, Dawn, vine charcoal, 6 1/2 x 13"
2006

A very different operation is involved with the above drawing. It was done on one of my portable easels on location on Monhegan Island in Maine looking out at the southern end of little Manana Island that shelters the tiny harbor from the rougher seas. The first rays of sunlight had  just struck the rocks on Manana and I could just see it as a composition. 

For several decades I primarily worked on small canvases outside and I loved what was postive about this method. There is simply no way even the most fertile artist's mind can match the insane combinations of shapes and spaces reality has waiting for us out there. I always tell my students that "reality has a four billion head start on all of us so of course it is more interesting than we are." The challenge with observational painting though can be that an artist can become too passive in accepting everything he or she sees. I find I'm very good at remaining selective when it comes to shapes but have a little more difficulty saying "no" to  the actual hues out in nature. And that leads me to so often working in the pearlescent greys of vine charcoal. 

So my studio practice these days is to ping pong back and forth between observational work on location and then long periods of just "out of my head" work in the studio. They feed each other. Can't imagine ever giving up either of them.



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