Philip Koch Paintings

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 ...

Wanted to share a little  background on some of the paintings in Somerville Manning Gallery's solo show of my work April 9 - May 8, 2021. First here's an interview we did about the show It's with the gallery's director Rebecca Moore. The interview was broadcast 4/28/21 on WCHE 1520 radio near Philadelphia. Somerville Manning Gallery's exhibition of Philip Koch paintings continues through May 8, 2021 Here are some individual paintings in the show. Radiance, oil on panel, 12 x 24 inches, one of the paintings Rebecca Moore talks about early in our interview. This is a view of one of the tidal marshes in Wellfleet on Cape Cod. I originally found the spot by jogging down a road whose name I liked- King Phillip Road.     The Reach IV, oil on canvas, 40 x 60 inches, another of the paintings discussed in the radio interview. This is one of my most autobiographical paintings, a tribute to the love I felt from my father who used to take me sailing at night on one of the ...

Charles Burchfield, Abandoned Farmhouse , watercolor, 1932 These two paintings, though they depart in color, have a similar theme about aging and the passage of time. It's partly expressed by the contrast of shapes in each of them. Philip Koch,  Bright Morning, oil on canvas, 36 x 54 inches, 2019 At the top is a poignant watercolor by Charles Burchfield of a long abandoned house. It was new to me when I came across it this evening. What's striking is the serious decay of the section of the house closest to the viewer. As its heavy roof sags further you can sense the movement of its eventual collapse almost as easily as the waving of the windswept grasses. Burchfield makes that so dramatic by contrasting it with the rear section of the house that still stands upright. The passing years seem eager to pull down this front section. They'll leave the back part for later. Just yesterday I completed my large canvas Bright Morning. It's a accurate ...

Philip Koch, The Roof, oil on canvas,  20 x 14 inches, Somerville Manning Gallery , Greenville, DE Edward Hopper and Charles Burchfield are two painters who have exerted enormous helpful influence on my work. Hopper wrote almost nothing about art. Burchfield filled literally thousands of pages with his observations on painting.  I guess I fall kind of in between those two.  I am shortly going to be leaving teaching my final course at MICA and moving to being a full time painter, an exciting prospect. Below is a list of ideas I'm going to be giving my art students tomorrow. They're general advice distilled down to just bullet points. Some of them may just provoke more questions. But maybe that's the idea. The 7 Secrets of Art (and a few more...) .                                      ...

Charles Burchfield, Chestnut Trees, ink wash drawing, 1920 Cleveland Museum of Art Sharing a few more highlights from Cleveland Museum of Art 's just concluded exhibition Charles Burchfield: The Ohio Landscapes 1915-1920 (Part 1 of my appreciation of the show is available here  ). Two of my personal favorites were these two ink wash drawings (above and below). One of the things that excites me about Burchfield's work is how he can suggest the feeling of full color when he in reality he often limited himself to just yellows and grays. In these monochrome wash drawings we see the expressiveness of just resonant tones of dark and light. Charles Burchfield, Apple Orchard,  ink wash drawing, 1920 Cleveland Museum of Art Artists have the job of noticing things of importance others have overlooked and calling people back to take a second look. We've all seen dandelion seeds blown by the wind. Yet I don't think any other ...