Philip Koch Paintings

Philip Koch, Narrow Cove, Ogunquit , oil on panel, 12 x 16 inches, 2021 Above is my new painting of the Maine shoreline just in front of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art. It was painted in my studio based on the on location vine charcoal I drew when my wife Alice visited the museum in October (see below). For decades I was painting outdoors with my oils and a French easel. Working like that brought a lot paintings I am proud of.  Just as important I learned so much about what it means to see creatively.  More recently I'm doing more painting in oil in the studio with the aid of vine charcoal drawings that I bring back indoors from outside excursions. Philip Koch, Narrow Cove Ogunquit, vine charcoal, 8 x 12 inches, 2021 For me the real purpose of making paintings of the outside world is that they invite us to explore our inner world. In a strong painting unusual shapes or unexpected chords of color will touch us down deep.  They awaken a language of energy and...

  Philip Koch. Truro Afternoon, oil on canvas, 28 x 42 inches, 2021 Here's one of my new paintings. It's based on a small oil I painted on location in Edward Hopper’s studio in Truro, MA. The view is of the corner of the studio’s painting room that inspired Hopper’s oil Rooms by the Sea from 1951 (now at Yale University Art Gallery). I have a long history of painting this corner of this room. It really started when I was much younger. Idly sunning myself on a lounge chair on the patio of my home, I was flipping through my parents’ copy of Time magazine. I was a typically preoccupied teenager, uninvolved with art. Coming  across a photo of Hopper’s  Rooms by the Sea I did a double take.  The painting powerfully evoked the feeling one has of gazing out at an expanse of open water. The vast waters of Lake Ontario were a big part of my life (since I was 3 1/2 we had lived on its shore, first in a rental house and then moving (on my 4th birthday no less) into our ...

Marion Boyd Allen (1862-1941), Portrait of Anna Vaughn Hyatt , 1915 Continuing with a few short comments about paintings that especially struck me on my visit to  Maier Museum of Art  at Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA. Sometimes you come across an artist whose work is so strong it makes you wonder why they're not better known. That's how it felt seeing Maier Museum of Art' s large oil by Marion Boyd Allen,   Portrait of Anna Vaughn Hyatt.     The figure of Hyatt is powerful and looks assured as she sculpts a horse and rider. It seems so fitting that the Maier Museum acquired this painting at a time when Randolph College was an all women's school.                       Installation view of the museum gallery with the Allen painting in a commanding position.     John Sloan, Sun and Wind on the Roof , oil on canvas, 1915 Ever since I studied painting in the same studio where John Sloan taught his c...

Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College, Lynchburg , VA I had the wrong major in college. Fortunately the campus art museum (Allen Memorial Art Museum) woke me up to what I was meant to do- paint. What a powerful impact even a smaller museum can have on a young artist. That's part of why I drove down from Baltimore to the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College  in Lynchburg, VA last week. They have an Edward Hopper landscape I needed to see (more later), but I was intrigued by what I'd seen  of their collection on-line as well. Thomas Cole, Corway Peak, New Hampshire,  oil on canvas, 1844 I'm a little different from many contemporary artists in that I've always looked for insight and inspiration from the artists who've gone down the path before me. When you're starting out you need guidance.  Allen Art Museum's giant color field painting by Larry Poons pushed me to explore what color could be made to do. I painted dozens of br...

  Philip Koch, Winter , oil on canvas, 36 x48 inches, 2021 If this painting looks like it's too cold that's good. It's a painting I made as a thank you for an early lesson cold winter gave me. It's done mostly from memory of my childhood in upstate New York. We lived right on the shore of Lake Ontario. Summers there were sweet. While the water was always on the cold side for swimming that never stopped us kids. Even on the hottest days there would be a breeze off the lake that kept the air comfortable.  Come winter things changed. Strong winds blew down from Canada  and vacuumed away even the most stubborn leaves that tried to cling to their branches. The Ontario shoreline quickly froze over with a glistening coat of ice.  Splashing waves would gradually build up mysterious forms that looked like icebergs. When the sun shone down on this I found it spellbindingly beautiful. We kids climbed all over the fantasy-like playgrounds these little ice mountains would gr...

 Philip Koch, Truro Beach , vine charcoal, 8 1/2 x 12 3/4 inches, 2004-5 When an artist makes a new painting they are always in conversation with works they have made before.  This morning while looking through my art archives I came across one of my favorite drawings.  I made it a quarter century ago but it's an important piece that led me to making some of my more ambitious works.   It's of a special place.  We were staying Truro, MA on Cape Cod in the former painting studio of the Edward Hopper. Hopper was the artist who inspired me early in my career to move from painting abstractions to working as a realist. I made the drawing of the intricately sculptural sand dunes on the beach just below his studio.  During that same residency in the studio there was a full moon one night that shone brilliantly down on the dunes. I got to wondering how those dunes along the shore would have looked under that moonlight and made this pastel drawing of h...

   Philip Koch, Summer, Owings Mills , oil on canvas, 16 x 18 inches, 1974 I found a wide open hilltop in the backyard of a church with a great view overlooking the hills in Owings Mills, MD. This was one of the best pieces I made that year. But it comes with a back story that in retrospect is pretty funny. I had set up my easel on a bright windy day. The sound of the wind pretty much drowned out everything else. The painting was proving hard to do and I was  becoming more and more exasperated. Finally my temper snapped and I abruptly grabbed the canvas off my easel, and cursing loudly, threw it as far as I could out into the field.  What I didn’t know was the pastor of the church had seen me painting and had come out to see what I was doing. He came up to me from behind as  things were going from bad to worse with the canvas. At the moment  he reached out to tap me on the shoulder to get my attention I lost it and hurled the painting. I managed to sc...

Philip Koch, Sun by the Truro Door, oil on panel, 18 x 24 inches, 2021 Science tells us without the energy that the sun shines down on our planet we couldn't sustain life. It's a big deal.  I think intuitively most artists sense that- certainly many painters (think Claude Monet and the French Impressionists for example) made celebrating the sun's light a core element in their works.  Above is a new oil that is headed up to  Addison Art Gallery  in Orleans, MA next week. I did it entirely from my memory of watching the first rays of the rising sun in the painting room in Edward Hopper's studio on Cape Cod. Anyone living I think has felt the quiet touch of excitement seeing that first splash of morning's sunlight .  I have a long history with that idea. When I was a teenager I wasn't particularly interested in art. One afternoon when leafing through my parents'  Time  magazine I stumbled into Hopper's painting...

 Philip Koch, Truro Studio Kitchen, oil on panel, 12 x 16 inches, 2021 Art is a feast for the eyes.  This is my latest painting.  Appropriately, a lot of meals have been consumed at this humble table.  In real life this table is a subtle cream color but I liked the feel of it with the yellow amped up a bit. The same with the reddish floor.  In the late afternoon the table is bathed in direct sun light. Even the room's shadows have a glow to them. This is the kitchen in Edward Hopper's studio in Truro, MA on Cape Cod.    I remember sitting in these chairs all to well. They're three-quarter size chairs, ironic as they belonged to a man who was 6' 5". Notoriously frugal, t he furniture Hopper and his wife Jo chose came from a second hand store. The studio's rooms are sparse. But there is one area where Hopper's studio is almost delightfully extravagant- it has lots of windows. On a clear day you see direct sun shining in from sunrise to sunset.  The...

  Philip Koch, Otter Cove II, oil on panel, 16 x 20 inches, 2008, Somerville Manning Gallery,  Greenville, DE Above is my painting Otter Cove II  that I recently along with the oil below Yellow Arcadia delivered to Somerville Manning Gallery when they needed additional work for my recent exhibition.  While I was at the gallery a couple asked me where I'd gotten the idea for the painting. I told him about my going to Otter Cove on Mt. Desert Island in Maine to do landscapes. I explained it was the spot from which one of my heroes, the 19th century painter Frederic Church had painted one of his best known oils of the island. What I failed to mention was I also hoped I'd get to see otters frolicking in the cove. Trouble was: no otters. Philip Koch, Mount Desert Island , vine charcoal, 5 x 13 inches, 2003 But the rhythm of the shore and islands more than compensated for the lack of aquatic wildlife. I made the above drawing with my easel se...

Wanted to share a little  background on some of the paintings in Somerville Manning Gallery's solo show of my work April 9 - May 8, 2021. First here's an interview we did about the show It's with the gallery's director Rebecca Moore. The interview was broadcast 4/28/21 on WCHE 1520 radio near Philadelphia. Somerville Manning Gallery's exhibition of Philip Koch paintings continues through May 8, 2021 Here are some individual paintings in the show. Radiance, oil on panel, 12 x 24 inches, one of the paintings Rebecca Moore talks about early in our interview. This is a view of one of the tidal marshes in Wellfleet on Cape Cod. I originally found the spot by jogging down a road whose name I liked- King Phillip Road.     The Reach IV, oil on canvas, 40 x 60 inches, another of the paintings discussed in the radio interview. This is one of my most autobiographical paintings, a tribute to the love I felt from my father who used to take me sailing at night on one of the ...

  This is my painting "Autumn Frontyard," oil on panel, 15 x 20 inches, 2021 that will be included in Somerville Manning Gallery's 's show of my work from April 9 - May 8 in Greenville, DE. This actually began in somewhat different form back in March of 1985. I painted this on location in the Mt. Washington neighborhood of Baltimore. The large white house intrigued me but seemed too formal, almost like a real estate ad, when viewed from directly in front. But seen obliquely through this screen of mostly leafless trees it took on a whole different character. It was titled "Spring Front Yard." This small oil I had painted outside served as the basis for a big 45 x 60” studio oil on canvas from 1989 that’s in the Permanent Collection of the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in Hagerstown, MD. In late Fall of 2020, under the spell of what was happening to the trees outside my studio window. The season’s colors inspired me to jump back into the small painti...

This is one of the major paintings that will be in Somerville Manning Gallery's show of my work April 9 - May 8, 2021, The Great Dune , oil on canvas, 28 x 42 inches, 2020. One of my best memories was being 6 and running down the steep sides of huge sand dunes on the North Carolina coast. These memories came flooding back to me when I discovered the dunes on Cape Cod. The winds off the ocean blow them into marvelously inventive aerodynamic shapes. The dunes can grow very tall and have a presence that feels permanent. Yet nature prods them to keep changing. This is a scene near the mouth of the Pamet River in Truro, MA. Years ago when I first started painting the dune in the center of this canvas it was mostly open white sand. More recently vegetation had taken hold and created an abstract patchwork. I love how it lends the dune its own distinctive personality.

This is probably what Edward Hopper's studio looked like in Hopper's day- "Edward Hopper's Studio: Truro," oil, 28 x 56 inches, 2020. It is one of the largest paintings in Somerville Manning Gallery 's upcoming show of my work opening April 9. Hopper first visited Cape Cod in 1930 and fell in love with how the light played over the barren massive sand dunes in Truro. Remember the 19th century inhabitants of the Cape had cut down many of the trees for lumber and firewood. I painted this canvas largely from memory of the wide open vistas around Hopper's studio when I had my first residency there in 1983, when the surrounding vegetation hadn't regrown as much as it has today. Two electrical poles frame the studio- there's a funny story attached to them. Hopper is famous for painting an unvarnished view of urban America. When the Hopper's built the studio in 1934 there was no electricity along the access road. Some years later the power company i...

     Philip Koch, Mountains by the Sea,  oil on canvas, 40 x 50 inches, 2019 Painting is about stirring our emotions. Once a museum visitor looking at one of my shows asked me if I only painted in the Fall. I was reminded of this as I gather together the paintings that will be in my solo show at Somerville Manning Gallery  next month.  I do opt for lots of oranges and reds when I'm choosing my paints. Actually I do a lot of my work outdoors when the greens of Spring and  Summer surround me.  But what I told that museum visitor was my paintings were about evoking how a scene makes me feel. There's a certain energy the intense light of the outdoors casts over a scene. Add to that a wind rustling the leaves and you feel almost like the world is softly vibrating.  Color choices in a landscape painting are about bringing the viewer closer to that  kind of experience .  I find if I push some of the color toward oranges and reds I get...