Touring Edward Hopper House Art Center's Koch Show

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In preparation for my Artist Gallery Talk this Friday evening (March 6 at 7:00 p.m., free) at the Edward Hopper House Art Center in Nyack, NY I've been looking at my works that are hanging in their current show Philip Koch: Landscapes and Hopper Interiors. Here are some more images of works in the show with a little bit of background for each one:



Hopper's Beach, Looking North, vine charcoal, 9 x 12", 2007. I drew this with my French easel set up on the beach on Cape Cod Bay, right below Hopper's Truro, MA studio. This sand dune in real life is enormous and deeply impressive. Nonetheless, Hopper never painted it, preferring to search longer and more widely to find just the right sources to trigger his painting imagination. Working where Hopper painted over the years I've learned to respect his extreme powers of selectivity. In them is a key to making art that moves beyond surface appeal to achieve real depth.






Edward Hopper's Truro Studio Kitchen, vine charcoal, 8 x 10", 2012. This is Hopper's tiny dining table where he and his wife Jo would eat their breakfast. The door at hte right is the main entrance to the studio. It opens to let in the afternoon sunlight. The pattern of that sunlight and shadows has a surprise and asymmetry to it that I knew would make a beautiful drawing.




The Reach IV, oil on linen, 40 x 60", 2011. Done from memory combining images of the Truro, MA coastline with my experience as a boy sailing at night on Lake Ontario. Obviously I've changed the color and the intensity of the moonlight that illuminates the sailboat, but I believe the altered color achieves an accuracy of how such a sail would feel.




Sun in an Empty Room: Blue, oil on panel, 12 x 16", 2013. Painted in Hopper's second floor bedroom in his Nyack family home. This is how the light streams in in the early morning.


Truro Studio Kitchen, oil on panel, 12 x 16", 2014. An oil I painted in Hopper's kitchen focusing on the one dining table Hopper and his wife Jo would use. The lighting provides a completely different effect than the charcoal drawing of the same table and chairs posted above.





Uncharted, oil on panel, 7 x 10 1/2", 2015. A painting I did from the memories I have of growing up in the snow country of upstate New York. After a heavy snow the world seems made new. It beckons to us to explore it. 

 Shortly I will post more of the work that is hanging in the Hopper House exhibition. The show runs through April 12, 2015.

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