The Painting that Almost Killed Me

-

Philip Koch, Yellow House at McDonogh, oil on panel, 
14 x 21 inches, 1995

I just ran across an image of this painting and it made me smile. 
It comes with quite a story. 

I had been asked to participate in a benefit art sale that was to take place on the grounds of the McDonogh School, a private school near my home outside Baltimore.

As the school has a lovely campus I drove out there to find a subject. Carrying my French easel and paints I hiked to the top of a hill on a blistering July day. and set up under the shade of a huge isolated tree. The spot provided vistas in all directions but after checking out all the possibilities, none seemed to have that something special needed to spark a really good painting. So I packed up my equipment and headed over to the shade of another tree 100 yards away.

The new spot offered the view above and I again unfolded my easel and set to work. The air was completely still. Just as I was mixing my first batch of oil color a loud cracking noise broke the silence. Whirling around just in time I saw the huge tree where I'd been standing only minutes before collapse under its own weight. It
didn't lean over and fall to one side. It it fell  straight down, as if it was falling in an elevator shaft. There had been no warning. It was just as if the tree decided it was time to go.

The thick limbs hit the ground and bounced with a thump, thump, thump that shook the ground even at my distance. I doubt very seriously if I would have survived had I stayed in that first location to paint.

I like to fantasize about The Muse coming to visit me as I paint and guiding my hand through difficult passages on my canvases. As for that morning, I'd also like to thank her for making me extra picky when it came to choosing where I should make my next painting.





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