Swope Art Museum Exhibition Part 1

-

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 feeling to them. It was a very sweet experience for me. 



Swope Museum's Director Susan Baley with 
Hopper's Route 6, Eastham

Swope has a stellar collection of American realist paintings from the first half of the 20th century. Most prominent of them is  Hopper's Route 6, Eastham. All three of the works I made working from the same house and barn Hopper chose are together in the exhibition. 

I knew from the start I wanted to depict the house and barn in a different mood than Hopper's interpretation. Where he chose a late afternoon light for his oil, I purposely arrived early in the morning to see the structures in bright morning sun.




Philip Koch, Morning at the Route 6, Eastham
House, vine charcoal, 7 x 14 inches, 2016

 Below are four small vine charcoal drawings that I made first to help me sift through the possibilities. I found it was the upper story of the buildings that felt most expressive so I chose to concentrate my attention there. The drawing above is the final result and it is included in the exhibit.






From that charcoal drawing I made this small oil on panel as a first step in discovering the color chords for my final large canvas.


Philip Koch, Morning at the Route 6, Eastham
House, oil on panel, 12 x 24 inches, 2016.

Here I am with the final canvas.



I will be showing more of the paintings in the exhibition in an upcoming blog post in several days. Here's a view of some of the work in the Museum's Haslem Gallery, one of the other two large spaces where the work is installed.

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

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

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