Philip Koch Paintings

  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 ...

 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, 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...

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, Cape Cod Morning, oil on canvas, 33 1/2 x 50 inches, 1994 The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art in Iowa is commemorating its 125 anniversary with a feature exhibition 125! 125 Masterworks from the Collection (through Jan. 17, 2021). Sean Ulmer, the museum's Director  let me know my painting Cape Cod Morning is included in the Masterworks  exhibition.  It's a huge honor to me to be hanging alongside some heavy hitters from the museum's permanent collection including Grant Wood, Henry Ossawa Tanner and Lucas Cranach the Elder. How my painting came to be is something of a "throw caution to the wind" tale.  On the main highway that runs the length of Cape Cod there's a particularly intriguing building that housed a bank. Back in  the '90's was painted a subtle yellow color I just loved. The trouble was I like to paint from direct observation rather than photographs, and the best point of view of the house was right in the middle of the busy hig...

Edward Hopper, Mrs. Scott's House, oil on canvas, 34 1/4 x 50 1/8 inches, 1932, Maier  Museum of Art at Randolph College, Lynchburg, VA I don't usually start a painting with another artist's painting in mind. My new canvas below however owes a big debt to Hopper's oil Mrs. Scott's House  that's in the collection of the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA. Edward Hopper and his wife Josephine first stayed on Cape Cod in the summer of 1930. For the next several summers they explored the land out near the very end of Cape Cod's peninsula.  Famously private, I suspect he liked how few people there were in the remote town of Truro.  One striking painting that resulted from this searching was Mrs. Scott's House  seen above.  Hopper was always drawn to paint big, solid volumes illuminated by brilliant sunlight. He must have loved the stark contrast of the massive and nearly bare dunes against the small but stubbornly u...

Philip Koch, Morning at the Route 6, Eastham House, oil on  canvas, 30 x 60 inches, 2017, Swope Art Museum,  Terra Haute, IN For sometime I had wanted to make a painting of the farm buildings on Cape Cod that the painter Edward Hopper immortalized in his oil Route 6, Eastham that is at the Swope Art Museum  in Indiana. The source is right on the main highway that runs through the town of Eastham. Unlike the open space Hopper saw, it's now tightly ringed by evergreens. Edward Hopper, Route 6, Eastham, oil on canvas, 1941,  Swope Art Museum, Terra Haute, IN Much as Hopper has inspired me, I wanted to do a painting that would stand on its own, free from his long shadow. So instead of jumping right in I took more time than usual imagining different ways I might proceed. It required a balancing act, navigating my way between borrowing too much from Hopper and the need to deal with all those obstructing tree...

Philip Koch, Truro Studio Door, oil on canvas,  48 x 36 inches, 1995 We  find hints of ourselves when we feel moved by the art of others. This was painted from a smaller oil I made on location in the large painting room of Edward Hopper’s Truro, MA studio.  I’ve been so fortunate over the years to have been given unprecedented access to Hopper’s Truro studio. When one is there you’re inevitably drawn to the windows and this doorway that line the west side of the house. All offer this view of Cape Cod Bay. It’s striking to see.  But for me it also felt familiar as the view reminded me of my boyhood home on the shore of the open waters of Lake Ontario. It’s funny what can cause you shame when you’re seven or eight. There were two things boys in my neighborhood had to do to be “one of the guys”- ride bikes and play basketball. I was lousy at basketball. And after a hard fall on an early attempt to ride a bicycle try as I might I couldn’t maste...