Upcoming Philip Koch Exhibition at Swope Art Museum

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One of the galleries at the Swope Art Museum

Susan Baley, the Director of the Swope Art Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana is arranging the programming for the Museum's 75th Anniversary in 2017. As part of that the Museum will be featuring my work in a solo exhibition:

Light and Shadow: Paintings and Drawings by Philip Koch from Edward Hopper's Studio,  January 20 - March 25, 2017.

The Swope is blessed with a world class collection of American realist paintings from the first half of the 20th century. The Museum's first Director, the painter John Rogers Cox, purchased them for the Museum.  He had a good eye and was able to buy important pieces for his new collection before their prices reached today's stratospheric level. 




The Swope Art Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana

The 75th Anniversary programming will focus on the Museum's permanent collection and connect it to some contemporary artists. Perhaps the keystone of the Swope's collection is its masterful Edward Hopper oil, Route 6, Eastham. Hopper painted it on Cape Cod near the studio he built in the nearby town of Truro, MA. It is through this painting that my own art connects to the Swope's legacy. 



Edward Hopper, Route 6, Eastham, oil on canvas, 1941


Most of the actual painting of Route 6, Eastham was done in Hopper's studio with him working from from extensive on site drawings he had made. I am fortunate to have been granted unprecedented access to Hopper's Truro studio. This year
I will be having my 16th residency staying and painting there. 



Philip Koch walking up the path from the beach to Hopper's
Truro, MA studio.



I have been doing a long running series of paintings of the interior of the Hopper studio during my stays there. Also I've used the studio as a base of operations to explore the immediately surrounding area and paint landscapes with my portable French easel.  


Philip Koch, Truro Studio Bedroom and Easel, oil 
on panel, 7 1/2 x 10", 2015, a painting I made with my 
easel set up in Hopper's bedroom looking at his easel in
the distance.




Philip Koch, The Reach IV, oil on canvas, 40 x 60",
2011. A painting done from memory and imagination. 
The setting is the shore on Cape Cod Bay just below
Hopper's studio. It is based on a charcoal drawing I
made on location on the beach there. I removed the
contemporary beach houses that have sprung up, 
choosing to depict it as it would have appeared in 
Hopper's time.





Philip Koch, Down to the Bay, oil on canvas, 36 x 72"
2008. I painted this from the town of Wellfleet, just
north of where Hopper painted his oil Route 6, Eastham.

 Here are some more of the paintings in the Swope's Permanent Collection.





Grant Wood Spring Planting,  oil, 1942




Thomas Hart Benton, Threshing Wheat,  1939



Charles Burchfield, Old Houses in Winter, watercolor, 1929-
1941.

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