Colors of June / Colors of September

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Philip Koch, Warm September, oil on panel, 14 x 21inches, 2020


Art expresses the emotions painters have about their subject. Sometimes though it's the opposite. 

This is my painting Warm September that is at Somerville Manning Gallery in Delaware. I started the piece by painting with mostly verdant green colors over three hot June afternoons. To be honest it was sort of weather that starts you longing for a crisp Fall day.  Later back in my studio I gave in to that fantasy and changed the calendar on that painting to a more temperate Fall day. Liked the result a lot.

This was the second painting I made from that spot. I'd found this subject when I came across a lovingly maintained split rail fence at the side of a field in East Aurora, NY. This was an area the fanciful painter Charles Burchfield favored for his own landscapes (I was the Artist in Residence for the Burchfield Penney Art Center in nearby Buffalo from 2015-18). 

Here below is the first on site oil I made of the fence. The painting on my portable easel was the basis for a larger painting, Split Rail Fence, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches that's now in the Permanent Collection of the Burchfield Penney Art Center. In the distance is the cupola on the barn in Warm September.













 

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