Hope

-












Philip Koch, From Day to Night, oil on panel, 18 x 36", 2011

Can you do a painting about hope? I think so, but perhaps coming straight out and saying it plainly might raise some eyebrows.

Some years ago everyone in my extended family was invited to a wedding on the other side of the country. Except me. By design or neglect, I never got an invitation. Feeling a little sorry for myself I decided to fly up to Maine to go painting for a week. I went to the mid coast town of Camden, one of the few places where the mountains come right down to the Atlantic. Arriving in something of a dark mood, I was distressed to find it raining steadily. As it turned out, I fought the rain and grey, and a touch more loneliness than usual the whole time I was there.

From a purely painting standpoint though it wasn't that bad and some excellent pieces got painted.  It's amazing how much work you can do crammed into the front seat of your car listening to the rhythmic slap of the wiper blades.

About 5 o'clock in the afternoon of my final day there I sensed a lightening up on the western horizon and raced up to the top of Mt. Batty. It has a commanding view of Maine's historic Penobscot Bay.
I was hoping to see the sun burst forth and give me one big payback for putting up with such a miserable week for painting. That didn't happen, but I did get to at least see some serious touches yellow and orange in a few of the clouds. Working as fast as I could, I did a vine charcoal drawing and a soft pastel drawing of the scene. These were the basis of what would become the painting above.

The final painting was one that pushed the color intensity of my longed-for sunset well past what the actual experience offered up. Desire for warmth and light had stirred up memories of other times and other sunsets. I think what I was doing was painting my hope for a more kind and nurturing weather.

Paintings are about our experience of reality, but we traverse both the landscape of the earth and the terrain of our internal emotional life. Art can report on the reality before us, but it can also transport us to other places and offer us alternative feelings. Painters,  equipped as we are with a highly trained imagination, might just be in the moving business for eyes and for hearts. Watch out FedEx!

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

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

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