Artists Have to Be Good Liars: My Show at Ogunquit Museum of American Art- Part III
Philip Koch, White Cove , oil on panel, 7 x 10 1/2 inches, 2021 Artists have to be good liars. Sometimes little lies tell a bigger truth. Reality is incredibly vivid- sometimes delightful, other times anything but. On occasion we may need to tune out the world, but that's not a place we're meant to stay. Art wakes us up. It reminds us why it's worth it to be open and aware. Artists make the case for this by presenting a heightened version of reality. Here are four of the paintings in Ogunquit Museum of American Art 's current exhibition of my work. The source for each was rooted in a particular location. In each to get the story I need to tell I had to depart from the literal facts of the place. White Cove above was begun at high tide along an inlet where dense foliage crowded over every inch of the shoreline. In truth the trees were a solid mass of unchanging green that didn't convey their explosive lushness. I injected yellows and oranges into the scene to ev