Philip Koch Paintings

The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA is bringing me to give a talk on Edward Hopper's life on Cape Cod on July 31, 2014. It is part of their programming around their new exhibition The Unknown Hopper: Edward Hopper as Illustrator  that runs at the Museum through October 26. Hopper was drawn to aspects of the world that he felt hadn't been explored enough. He found unexpected meaning in rooftops, glimpses through windows and in humble backyard settings. And it is intriguing that when his wife Jo inherited money he chose to build his studio outside New York on Cape Cod. Cape Cod, especially its outer section from Eastham out to Truro and Provincetown is a pretty distinctive landscape with a look all its own. If one looks at the history of artists who made the Cape one of their subjects, nobody in my opinion nailed it like Hopper.  Above is one of my own paintings, Edward Hopper's Road , oil on canvas, 40 x 60" that is in the collection of the Midwest Mu...

Isalos Fine Art in Stonington, ME just received four new Philip Koch oil paintings for their summer season. The gallery is owned by Michael and Rebecca Daugherty (Rebecca is also a painter and that's her oil of the gallery above). Last summer one of the gallery's feature shows was a solo exhibition,  Inside Edward Hopper's World: Paintings by Philip Koch, that focused just on my work done in Edward Hopper's former studio on Cape Cod and his boyhood home in Nyack, NY.  Here's Michael Daugherty standing in front of some of my work in the show last summer in his gallery. The show did well and garnered a feature article by Bob Keyes  in the 8/11/13 edition of the Maine Sunday Telegram (you can read the article here ). This year we're showing my landscapes. One of the new quartet is my Adirondack Lake: Red, oil on panel, 10 x 7 1/2", 2014. It was painted on Lake Placid, NY near where they held the Winter Olympics. ...

My painting Banner , oil on panel, 24 x 18", 2014 is in the new group exhibition Summer Pleasures  at Thomas Deans Fine Art in Atlanta. There is an opening reception Friday, June 13 from 6-8 p.m. The show runs through Aug. 2, 2014.  It is a painting based entirely on memory.  And it comes with some history. As I often do I worked out this image over the course of years. Below is the initial version, an oil on panel from 2008 measuring 10 x 7 1/2". And it too stemmed from events farther back. About ten years ago my wife Alice and I went on a painting excursion to northern Vermont. One morning I got rained out from working with my portable easel in the field but found a wonderful alternative view from the breakfast room of our B&B in Burlington. Situated on a hill, it looked out on a towering pine that framed a distant view of Lake Champlain and the even more distant Adirondack Mountains of New York.  The pine just spoke to me. It had a broken rhythm ...

Philip Koch , Memorial , oil on panel, 18 x 36”, 2010 Last Friday I delivered four new paintings to Somerville Manning Gallery in Greenville, Delaware, just outside of Wilmington. It's an extraordinary gallery in many ways. For example as I brought my work in and placed my paintings against the wall I looked up to see hanging above them a large oil by the 19th century master painter John Singer Sargent (!). Their current exhibit, the impressive American and European Masters, is up through June 14.  Here is a bit of background on each of my new oil paintings in the gallery. As a boy growing up in an unsettled woods on the shore of Lake Ontario outside of Rochester, NY, I was deeply impressed by the power of moonlight to illuminate the shadowy forest. Years later when my wife and I honeymooned on Mt. Desert Island in Maine I fell in love with the vast panorama of small islands one sees looking south from the summit of Mt. Desert’s Cadillac Mountain. For my...