Same Place / Different Worlds

-



Philip Koch, Blackberry River Forest, oil on canvas,
55 x 44 inches, 1994. The on-site study for  this
studio oil is just below.

Introspection is a good and useful tool. Yet often we find out something new about ourselves when we're looking outside at the world.

This struck me as I looking at a group of my earlier paintings of white birch trees. All four were based on two stands of birches in Norfolk, CT. 

I had set my French easel set up alongside a hilly country road. If looked to the left an older growth of birches backed up against a heavily wooded mountainside. That forest looked impenetrable and the heavy older birches were bent over. They had lost many branches in  storms. Yet they stubbornly survived. You sensed there was a long history here.




Philip Koch, Blackberry River Forest, oil on panel,
25 x 20 inches, 1987. This was painted on location.




Philip Koch, Near the Blackberry River, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 
inches, 1987

From the same spot and looking to the right a very different tableau emerged. Here younger birches seemed to eagerly reach out to the world. Their thinner trunks stood more straight and erect. In back of them a farmer had mowed a pasture. Even though I began the on-site oil on a cloudy day, the open spaces lent a sense of illumination to the scene. There was a sense of anticipation in the air.



Philip Koch, Near the Blackberry River, oil on panel, 20 x 25
inches, 1987, the source for the larger studio oil above.

Sometimes I come upon a new source and get an itching feeling that I want to paint it.  Often it feels like I already know the scene. Though I may be seeing it for the first time it strikes a familiar internal chord.  

For the viewer who is grabbed by a particular painting it's the same- their eyes get excited by what they're seeing, but there's also a sense that they know the scene. Who hasn't said to themselves when looking at a powerful painting  "Yes, I've felt that.." 

Art and music, dance and even sport- at first glance these things can seem to lack real purpose. But they are useful tools. Unconsciously we reach for them to pry the door open wider to feeling and knowing what is really going on inside ourselves.

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