Philip Koch Paintings

  At Somerville Manning Gallery yesterday- Left: Evergreen, Middle: Winter, Right: Narrow Cove Ogunquit At Somerville Manning Gallery yesterday,  Warm September I took four new paintings up to Somerville Manning Gallery in Greenville, DE yesterday. Two had just returned from Ogunquit Museum of American Art's exhibition Philip Koch: Isle of Dreams in Maine, and the other two were large canvases fresh off my easel.   Evergreen,   oil on canvas, 36 x 54 inches, 2022 (above).  When I was out on location painting the study for this large oil I had the feeling this was a home happily contented people lived in. Perhaps that's silly as I didn't see anyone around over the three mornings I worked on the painting. But there was something wonderful about their yard- bright sun splashing on exuberantly colored shutters and roof. Setting this off were the solemn dark evergreens, impressive in their size and obvious maturity.       Just retur...

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 t...

  Philip Koch, Maine Islands, oil on panel, 7 x 17 1/2 inches, 2021 This is the post second in a series looking at the 15 paintings currently in the exhibition Philip Koch: Isle of Dreams  at  Ogunquit Museum of American Art in Maine (through July 19, 2022). Think for a moment on your life. So much is in flux. What have you learned? You face sweeping changes. Some things have been lost. And yet other things in us feel permanent.  Some stand firm like rocks resisting pounding surf. There are parts of all of us that feel exactly as they did when we were six. I have a near addiction to painting waters and shorelines.  Growing up right on the shore of Lake Ontario I feel naturally at home on the edge of the water. But there's something more to it. The way the land holds its place while the waters, turbulent or gentle, never really stop moving. I think we sense the currents both of change and permanence mirrored by the water hitting the shoreline. How...

      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...

Philip Koch, Narrow Cove, Ogunquit , oil on panel, 12 x 16 inches, 2021 Above is my new painting of the Maine shoreline just in front of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art. It was painted in my studio based on the on location vine charcoal I drew when my wife Alice visited the museum in October (see below). For decades I was painting outdoors with my oils and a French easel. Working like that brought a lot paintings I am proud of.  Just as important I learned so much about what it means to see creatively.  More recently I'm doing more painting in oil in the studio with the aid of vine charcoal drawings that I bring back indoors from outside excursions. Philip Koch, Narrow Cove Ogunquit, vine charcoal, 8 x 12 inches, 2021 For me the real purpose of making paintings of the outside world is that they invite us to explore our inner world. In a strong painting unusual shapes or unexpected chords of color will touch us down deep.  They awaken a language of energy and...

  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...

\ Fathers' Day Observation:  We parents learn from and are changed by our children. Evidence of this crops up all the time but somehow when it does I'm always a little surprised.  The photo above is what greeted me as I walked into my studio this morning.  On the right is my painting from 2019, The Dawn,  oil on panel, 18 x 36 inches. It's a view inspired by the coast of Maine. I was very happy with it. Enough so that I resolved to recreate it on a more grand scale.  I figured it would be a simple enough job to work up the smaller oils basic composition on the 56 inch canvas at the left.  It's at times like this when you think you know where you're going that painting delights in telling you "Not so fast." One evening last week I glanced at the paintings on the two easels in the mirror I keep in my studio. Unexpectedly it struck me that  I much preferred the lighter tones in the sky and water in the unfinished ...

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...

Philip Koch, The Dawn, oil on panel, 18 x 36 inches, 2019 This painting was a long time in coming.  Alice, my soon-to-be wife wanted to honeymoon in Acadia National Park. I’d always been curious so I said “sure.” We got married at the beginning of May 1983 and flew up to Acadia. One morning I let Alice sleep in, and with the first light, crept out to go painting. Driving to a disappointingly fog-covered summit of Cadillac Mountain I thought  “Let me wait  a bit to see if the view will clear.” As if the weather gods were listening within minutes I was treated to the spectacle of the rising sun breaking through the fog. Like the clouds I was blown away. The Dawn of course, like a honeymoon, is a perfect symbol of new beginnings. I thought someday I must make a painting about this moment. This painting is going to be included in a curated exhibition Maine: The Painted State  at Greenhut Galleries in Portland, ME April 4 - 27, 2019.

Philip Koch,  Thicket, oil on panel, 14 x 21 inches, 2017 Some of my new paintings go way back. This one actually started in 1982. Alice and I got married that year in the rain in our backyard with a female justice of the peace. Right after the ceremony we flew to Maine for our honeymoon.  I'd never been to Mount Desert but Alice had and she insisted I'd love it. Boy was s he right. Wandering in the woods near the Island's distinctive towering cliff named The Precipice I fell in love with this stand of young white birches. Worked from it for three afternoons and made a wonderful small oil. Later that summer I painted a large version of the composition in my studio. But before I had time to really enjoy either oil, the small version went to a collector and the large canvas entered the Permanent Collection of the Butler Institute of American Art.  Great as this was, I missed the paintings. Sometimes that happe...