Edward Hopper and Me on Cape Cod

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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 good about the painting is the way 
Hopper focuses on the effects of light rather than on architecture's details.


I wanted to share some of the paintings Hopper had done that were flickering in the back of my mind while I was painting on the Cape last summer. 


 Philip Koch, Still Harbor, oil, 18 x 24 inches, 2018, Addison
Art Gallery, Orleans, MA.
Just like Edward Hopper did when he was a boy, I built a small wooden
sailboat when I was young (and just like Hopper's effort, it leaked 
badly). Nonetheless Hopper's love for the shapes and color of sailing
remained with him throughout his career. I always loved the Hopper
below of gulls on a sandbar watching a boat sail by.



 Edward Hopper, The Martha McKeen of Wellfleet, oil, 1944



What jolted me out of my indifference to art when I was a teenager was coming across a reproduction of Hopper's oil Rooms by the Sea from 1951 in my parents' copy of Time magazine. I was bowled over by the personality Hopper invested in the sunlight on his studio wall. Little did I know then that my path would one day lead me to staying and working in the studio where Hopper had made that critical painting.  


Philip Koch, Hopper Bedroom, Afternoon, acrylic, 9 x 12 inches, 2018
Addison Art Gallery, Orleans, MA

In Hopper's painting he gives us a view of the open door to Cape Cod Bay and at the left just a glimpse of his bedroom. I made
my painting with my easel set up in the small bedroom. The painting strikes a balance between the Bay's waters and the brilliant afternoon sunlight cast over the bedroom closet door. 


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