Nuts and Bolts

-


Sun in an Empty Room II, vine charcoal, 7 x 14", 2012 (drawn on location in Edward Hopper's boyhood bedroom in Nyack, NY)

Vine charcoal is a medium known for its delicacy. But that fragility is something of a problem when it comes to moving such drawings. Until they're safely framed under glass you must handle them as if you're walking on eggshells. The drawing above is in one of these crates below...




...along with 15 other paintings, pastels, and vine charcoal drawings look like when they're waiting to be picked up by the FedEx guy for their trip up for my solo exhibit at Isalos Fine Art in Stonington, Maine. None of the work for this upcoming show (Aug. 13 - Sept. 2, 2013) is particularly large, but since a half dozen of the pieces are works on paper framed under glass, they had to be wrapped generously in bubble wrap. The packaged pieces on paper like this get bulky pretty quickly. I'm determined to have the pieces arrive safely without a scratch.  

Here's another of the drawings in the crates above, May 15, 1967, vine charcoal, 7 x 14". The title refers to the day Edward Hopper died. I drew the piece on location on a cold and blowing Fall day looking back up from the beach at Hopper's simple studio and perhaps that cast a more somber tone over my mind as I considered what to name the drawing.



Isalos Fine Art issued a good press release for the exhibit, Inside Edward Hopper's World: Paintings by Philip Koch that you can see on their website. It includes a link to a page showing all the pieces that will hang in the show.

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