Philip Koch Paintings

      New Day , oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches, 2022 Ogunquit Museum of American Art in Maine is presenting Philip Koch: Isle of Dreams  from May 1 - July 19, 2022.  Theresa Choi, the Assistant Curator at the museum, selected works for the show with a focus on themes of islands and shoreline.  Ogunquit Museum comes with an important link to my personal history. Early in my career seeing work by Edward Hopper made a powerful impact on me, inspiring me to change from painting abstractions to working as a realist. The Ogunquit Museum has hung my paintings in the same gallery space where in 2005 they showed the oils Hopper painted on the grounds of what would become the Ogunquit Museum. Here's one of those canvases- Hopper's Sea at Ogunquit  from 1914, a view painted from life directly behind where the museum stands today. My wife Alice and I made a special trip from Baltimore to Ogunquit to see that 2005 show of Hopper's work. You can stand...

  Paintings are inanimate objects I know. But sometimes lying in bed at  night I think I almost hear some whispering downstairs in my studio. Making paintings is like nurturing your houseplants as it can't be rushed. You have to take as long as needed to complete a painting.  Above is my studio this morning with the two easels I always have  side by side. On the right is Turret House, Nyack , oil on panel, 9 x 12 inches. It was begun in 2015. I worked on it on and off until summer of 2020 when I was finally satisfied it was saying what it needed to say. The painting's sort of a proud veteran who went through lots of changes before it was done.  On the left is a new oil that's just getting started. It has an even longer history- it's based on a tiny oil I painted on the coast of Maine in 2009. Still in its infancy this new oil faces growing pains and uncertainties before it comes into its own. I know I'm projecting but I imagine a painting at this stage woul...

Philip Koch, Penobscot Bay #1, pastel, 7 x 14 inches, 1999 Just before I went to bed last night I was looking at the above pastel for the first time in a long while. My first thought was that the drawing wasn't sure if it was about brightening sun or darkening storms. Then I decided that was its point. Way back in 1999 my feelings had been hurt when a relative had forgotten to invite me to an important family wedding. Not wanting to sit home moping  I booked a last minute flight to Maine to paint for a week in the coastline of Penobscot Bay.   The area lived up its reputation for striking natural beauty. But Maine can be notorious for rain and gloom and the art gods had decided that was being to be the menu for that week. Every day it poured.  Of course I was disappointed but I'd come prepared and was able to turn the front seat of my rental car into a makeshift studio, making a series of finished charcoal drawings of the landscape.  Later on thes...