Sweet Distractions

-

Woke up this morning all energized to hit the easel and finish off the half dozen oils I have in progress right now. I'm excited about all of them. 

Pulling on my socks though I turned my head to gaze out the window on the fog wrapping around my favorite maple tree. Damn but it was lovely! Came within an inch of dropping everything and starting a new painting. 



But I didn't. 

Sometimes I see paintings in museums by famous artists (whose work I usually admire) that seem unresolved to me. I always wonder about that. Once an artist has become widely recognized and widely collected, the prices for their paintings can skyrocket. And even unfinished work that only collected dust in the corner of their studio can become monetarily really valuable. 

Whenever you see a work where the artist managed to bring their vision completely to life it's thrilling. All artists, even the most talented, get stuck. If they're smart that's when they put their work aside for awhile and go on to other pieces. Eventually they'll get an idea for how to fix the troubled work-in-progress and return to finish it off.

Most artists of any accomplishment have lots of work like this lying around. They're waiting until the muse "whispers in their ear" and tells them how to fix their troubled incomplete pieces.
At a certain point, the artist either has to get them finished or failing that, paint over them. I'd like to leave a legacy of lots of fully realized paintings. And those six pieces I need to finish are calling to me.

To the woods outside my studio this morning I will have to say thank you and savor the memory of how they made me feel. That's good enough. Those six in-progress works are clamoring for the brush.



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