How Much Have I Been Influenced by Edward Hopper and Charles Burchfield?

-

Philip Koch, Thicket II, oil on linen, 28 x 42", 2014

I recently had posted my oil Thicket II as the image on a Facebook events page announcing the opening reception for my show at Art Essex Gallery in Essex, CT (this Saturday, May 17, 4-7 p.m., show runs through June 7). Lee Mamunes, an artist and a knowledgeable docent at the Edward Hopper House Art Center in Nyack, NY, made a very complementary but also perceptive comment about the painting.

Lee wrote: 

At first I thought of Charles Burchfield's trees, but his work is so jittery and the palette isn't his. Then I realized that your scene depicts calm and solitude more like Hopper. Wait! Have you synthesized both artists?    



Charles Burchfield, September Wind and Rain, 
watercolor, 22 x 44", 1949, Butler Institute of American Art



Edward Hopper, New York, New Haven & Hartford, 
oil, 32 x 50", 1931, Indianapolis Museum of Art


Of course it's pretty nice to be mentioned in the same sentence with these two giants of American realist painting.

I replied to Lee : 

 Lee, thanks for your very perceptive comments!
Burchfield I feel claimed that jittery territory as something all his own- somehow he defies the odds and pulls it off as an exalted and elegant place to be. But other painters need to carefully follow their own natures, and I will always have one foot firmly planted in the Edward Hopper camp. As you say, Hopper offers us solitude and calm in his work. I find a great quiet energy in Hopper's world and it is a place I will always feel at home in.

Some years ago my paintings probably did have a more Hopper-like feel to them. But I think over time if one is really painting at their best, their inner personality insists on asserting itself. In particular, my hand prefers a more agitated paint stroke than Hopper. And especially in the last 15 years my color sense has become more adventurous, straying farther off the path of the local colors one would expect to see.

Burchfield on the other hand inhabited a remarkable world all his own. I believe anyone who consciously tried to closely imitate his handwriting and his vision is going to come up short.

The best stance for a painter is to stand back at a little distance from both these amazing painters. Learn from them, be inspired by them, but also listen one's own inner voice. That is what I have tried to do. 


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