Philip Koch Paintings

I'm just returned from a painting trip to the Adirondack Mountains in the northernmost corner of New York State. I go there for the unrivaled wild terrain. One of the key functions of art is it shows us how to see the world. As a painter I've learned enormous lessons from the artists who've trodden the path before me. No one has taught me more than Rockwell Kent, the American artist who lived from 1882-1971. I believe he is our finest printmaker, bar none. The biggest single influence on my own painting of the last 15 years is Kent's wood engravings. One of my favorite small art museums, the Plattsburgh State Art Museum, has the above Kent wood engraving hanging now in its Rockwell Kent Gallery. It's always worth the drive up to Plattsburgh, NY to visit it on the shore of Lake Champlain just a couple of miles this side of the Canadian border. This wood engraving by Rockwell Kent captures the spirit of the man as well as of the Adirondacks in general. Plattsburgh h...

Philip Koch, West from Monhegan, oil on panel 28 x 42", 2009 Degas is reputed to have said that artists need to have the cunning of criminals. He probably said this to stimulate peoples' thinking. Artists are famous for saying slightly outlandish things for just that purpose. What he was getting at was that artists genuinely try to tell us the truth, but that they distinguish between big truths and small ones.  Back in June '06 I made my first painting trip out to Mohegan Island off the coast of Maine. Way back in 1969 I first learned  of Mohegan while reading Robert Henri's book The Art Spirit  while I was studying at the Art Students League in New York city. The book quotes Henri advising a young artist to go to paint the wild elements on Monhegan, as he himself had done. His students including Rockwell Kent and Edward Hopper, and many others, took him up on it. So many fine painters ended up painting on the island that for me my trip there took on the aura of a pilg...