Warmth of a Frozen Memory
Philip Koch with his painting Chestnut Ridge Panorama , oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches, 2018 In June of 2015 I began traveling to Buffalo, NY as the Burchfield Penney Art Center’s Artist in Residence. One of the first places I went to paint was Chestnut Ridge Park, miles south of Buffalo, an area where the artist Charles Burchfield did some of his landscape work. I loved the view from the Park’s overlook facing north- miles of forest and fields leading towards Lake Erie. The Lake at this distance was just the thinnest band of silver-white but it exerted a surprising pull on me. Sometimes you will see something that catapults you back in time. I grew up on the shore of Lake Ontario in the then rural town of Webster, NY. A school bus would take me on a half hour long tour of the rolling countryside every morning and afternoon. Usually I rode lost in my daydreams. But there was one spot on the route where I’d rouse myself so as not to miss the view. As the bus crest...