Philip Koch Paintings

Having visited the Swope Art Museum several times before, I knew that it had a remarkable Permanent Collection. We traveled there earlier this month for the opening reception for their current exhibition of my own paintings. Naturally we wanted to see the work in their Collection as well. Above is my wife Alice standing next to Swope's Thomas Hart Benton painting  Threshing Wheat from 1938-39. The tractor's smoke and the clouds in the painting seem to move of course,  but in Benton's lively imagination his piles of wheat and the distant hills pulsate as well. Art can transport us to a different place or into a different mood. A real gem in Swope's Collection is Grant Wood's  Spring in Town , oil, 1941.  While painted in the threatening early years of WWII, it exudes a quiet optimism as we watch the figure preparing the ground for planting.  The garden's freshly turned earth is magically da...

This is me last week in Terre Haute, Indiana grinning next to Swope Art Museum 's famous Hopper oil,  Route 6, Eastham  from 1941.  Here are some more images of Swope's current exhibition  Light and Shadow: Paintings and Drawing by Philip Koch from Edward Hopper's Studio (through March 25, 2017). Susan Baley, Swope's Director, conceived of the show to connect some contemporary art with some of the key artworks from the founding collection when the Swope opened to the public 75 years ago.  Here's the signage at the entrance to the three galleries the Museum has devoted to my work. In one of the two larger galleries, a  panorama of three of my large landscape oils- left: After the Storm III, 45 x 90 inches, 1986, middle: Horizon, 40 x 60 inches, 2016, right: Down to the Bay , 36 x 72 inches, 2008. The lighting on these paintings in the gallery was just perfect to show their colors. Below: In the other large ...

Left: Philip Koch's Morning at the Route 6, Eastham House, oil on canvas, 30 x 60 inches, 2016. Right: Edward Hopper. Route 6, Eastham, oil on canvas, 1941.  The above photo was taken last weekend in one of the three galleries Swope Art Museum has devoted to their new show of my paintings done during my residencies in Edward Hopper's Truro, MA studio. Hopper was the big influence on me when I was a young artist. Naturally it is a deep honor to have my work hanging next to that of the man who was my greatest teacher.   The Friday evening opening for the show was probably the largest turnout I've ever had for one of my exhibitions. Swope Museum did a wonderful job installing and lighting the work.  There must have been ten people, none of them known to me, who came up to me the during the reception to say they saw the common thread that runs through Hopper's art and my own, but that they liked how my paintings had a different handling and...