Philip Koch Paintings

Philip Koch, Penniman House , oil, 9 x 12 inches, 2018, Addison Art Gallery, Orleans, MA Edward Hopper made one of his best known landscapes from a house and barn right on Route 6 in Eastham, only a stone's throw from the historic Penniman House in the Fort Hill area. While I painted this on a cloudy day, I remembered the angle  of the sunlight in Hopper's painting Haskell's House  seen below. Addison Art Gallery in Orleans, MA has organized a whole number of exhibitions and events around the legacy the painter Edward Hopper left for contemporary artists on Cape Cod. Helen Addison, the Gallery's owner, is spotlighting the deep connection Hopper had with the unique landscape of the Cape. Much of how we see this unusual place is guided by the dozens of paintings he made there.  Edward Hopper, Haskell's House , watercolor, 1924. While done in nearby Gloucester, MA, this typical of many of the older homes on Cape Cod. What I find so goo...

Philip Koch, Chestnut Ridge Panorama,  pastel, 9 x 12 inches, 2018 I needed to show someone some of the preparatory work I did for my large painting Chestnut Ridge Panorama  below. It was the culmination of a 3 year long exploration. Above is a pastel drawing I made in the later stages to help me figure out what color chords to use in the painting's expanse of sky. Philip Koch, Chestnut Ridge Panorama, oil on canvas, 36 x 48  inches, 2018   In many ways saying I do "preparatory work" sounds too organized and polite. It doesn't capture the feel of the process. For me the idea for a major new painting starts out innocently enough with at first just a glimmer of an intriguing new idea stealing into my head. I have to look all over for ideas to convert this feeling into a solid, compelling composition. With lots of experimenting, false starts and head scratching the process takes you to a half formed image. Then the w...

Edwin Dickinson, Interior, oil on beaverboard, 1916, Philadelphia Museum of Art The tantalizing composition above challenges us to try to explain what's going on in this pile of figures. Exceptionally odd as it is it's so well painted it's compelling. It's one of the oils by Edwin Dickinson that has recently entered the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This week we drove up from Baltimore to the Philadelphia Museum of Art . To mark the gift the museum recently received of six oils by the painter Edwin Dickinson (American 1891-1978) Kathleen Foster, the museum's Senior Curator of American Art, organized Between Nature and Abstraction: Edwin Dickinson and Friends. The show pairs Dickinson's work with that of artists whose work and time intersect Dickinson's. The exhibition concludes Feb. 10, 2019- if you hurry you can see it. Edwin Dickinson, Self Portrait, oil on canvas, 1940 Philadelphia Museum of Art The show's t...