New Paintings Begin Years Before the Brush Hits the Canvas

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 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 how I imagined the scene.



Philip Koch, Moonlight on Truro Beach, pastel, 8 1/2 x 12 3/4 inches, 2004


Sometimes the work you have done seems to want to call you back. The spirit of both the charcoal drawing and the pastel continued to resonate in the back of my mind. You find yourself repeatedly thinking about an image just because you enjoy falling into that world.

It came to me I wanted to combine that Cape Cod shoreline with a more distant memory of the times my father used to take me sailing on Lake Ontario at night. What followed were a series of paintings exploring these images.



Philip Koch, The Reach IV, oil on canvas, 40 x 60 inches, 2021, at Somerville Manning Gallery,
Greenville, DE

The most recent and most vibrant in color of these canvases is The Reach IV. It's a little moody and mysterious, just the way the past often whispers to us. 

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