Philip Koch Paintings

Winslow Homer, Weatherbeaten , oil on canvas, 1894 Portland Museum of Art, Maine I was traveling in the last month. First to Portland, Maine where I attended Greenhut Galleries opening for their exhibition Maine: The Painted State that included one of my paintings. Also visited the Portland Museum of Art and soaked up one of their hallmark Winslow Homer oils, Weatherbeaten. It was painted just south of the Museum in Prouts Neck. Nobody painted surf crashing on rocks with the power and authority Homer achieved. Notice the deliberate way Homer painted his rocks. Ignoring details he paid special attention to their color. In the detail above we see how he marches our eye back into space with alternative bands of warm and cool. His closest rocks are reddish, a cooler gray on the next rocks farther back, followed by a warm dark colored finger of rock. Finally we reach the silvery cool green-grays of the surf. And Homer was something...

Winslow Homer, Eight Bells, oil on canvas, 1886, Addison  Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA Right before Christmas my wife Alice and I drove up from Baltimore to the Brandywine River Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, PA to see their exhibition Winslow Homer: Photography and the Art of Painting. Organized by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art Co-Director Frank H. Goodyear and Dana Byrd, an art history professor at Bowdoin, the show runs through Feb. 14, 2019. Included in the show is a camera that had belonged to Homer. It's a treat to see this artifact from another time- it's partly made of wood! Along with photos Homer had taken, the curators pulled together  a stunning group of Homer oils from several museums.  Homer was incredibly sensitive to the design of his paintings. Here's an example: His two mariners work together to squeeze the empty space between them into an expressive shape of its own. Though they're both dressed i...

Winslow Homer, An Open Window,  oil, 1872, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine Here are two paintings by two of my favorite American artists, Winslow Homer (1836-1910) and Charles Burchfield (1893-1967).    Differences abound between the hushed interior at the Portland Museum of Art and the glistening sunlight that dazzles our eye in the Memorial Art Gallery 's landscape. Each has its own color sense and distinctive mood. Charles Burchfield , Springtime in the Pool, watercolor,  1922, Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, New York But both artists energize their paintings by doing something surprisingly similar- deliberately contrasting the regular horizontal or vertical lines in their compositions against prominently stated curves. Winslow Homer's woman stands erect framed by the vertical edges of the window. Homer contrasts the straightness of the right side of her dress against the curving arc of his models left hip....

The holidays are a time to get together with good old friends. My wife Alice and I decided to drive down to Washington, DC to our favorite museum. The  Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) has an enormous and unrivaled permanent collection. We've visited it ever so many times that many of my "old friends" are to be found hanging on its walls.   They have the best angel painting ever, Abott Henderson Thayer's Stevenson Memorial. Can't help myself, just love that painting for how  it sounds its contemplative and slightly melancholy mood.  T hat's me soaking it up. Here's an old friend, Edward Hopper, who people never think of as a celebratory artist. Here's his  Ryder House, to me it's a stirring hymn to the brilliance of sunlight on a white wall. Its light seems to pulse with its own clear energy. Look at how the artist pushes the highlights on the sunlit grasses down way darker than the whites on the house. He kno...

Winslow Homer 1836-1910 Next month I've been asked to deliver a slide talk at the annual dinner of the Baltimore Watercolor Society. My title for the talk is a little tongue-in-cheek, but it's an acknowledgement that watercolor can be the trickiest of painting media. But my big point will be that seeing the work of some previous masters of this delicate medium teaches how to enjoy our eyes on a deeper more satisfying level.  Three of the most important American watercolorists are Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper and Charles Burchfield. Let's start with Winslow Homer, who is photographed above wearing a natty three-piece suit that I bet he never wore to paint in.  Homer's watercolor Stowing Sail, (1903, Art Institute of Chicago) was the first painting I ever saw. My parents had a framed print of it hanging over our sofa. I distinctly remember as a 3 year old connoisseur I used to lie on the carpet and study it. I figured it wasn't very good.  ...

John Singer Sargent, An Out of Doors Sketch, oil Friday night I drove down to the Academy Art Museum in Easton, MD to hear Peter Trippi, the Editor of Fine Art Connoisseur  magazine, who had just judged the paintings that came in from the Plein Air Easton event. He spoke about each of his selections for prizes. But he also addressed bigger concerns from the point of view of an enthusiast of observational realism in painting. He argued against the misconception that painting by direct observation of nature produces nothing more than a photograph-like copying of reality. Academy Art Museum, Easton, MD As a someone committed to "painting from life" for over four decades I know it has changed the way I look at the world. Try an experiment: stare closely at a photo. Then raise your gaze and look out a window at perhaps the cars on the street outside. What you see through the panes of glass is overwhelming to the eye. You're now taking in tens or hundred...

Winslow Homer, The Trapper , oil on canvas, 19 x 29 1/2", 1870, Colby College Museum of Art. This oil likely served as a  preparatory canvas for the larger oil below. Winslow Homer, An Adirondack Lake , oil on canvas, 24 1/4 x 36 1/4",  1870, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle. Cover of exhibition catalogue for the 1970 show  The American Scene  featuringa detail from the Henry Art Gallery's version of Homer's painting.   Today is Winslow Homer's birthday (Am. 1836 - 1910). I was reminded of this by the Colby College Museum of Art 's Facebook post wishing that old master of American Realism the best this afternoon. Accompanying their good wishes was the painting at the top, The Trapper , from their Collection that Homer painted in 1870.  It probably served as a preparation for a larger work Homer painted expanding on the subject that's now in the Henry Art Gallery , University of Washington, Sea...

Hopper, House on Middle Street, Gloucester, watercolor, 1924 Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH The Edward Hopper House Art Center in Nyack, NY has asked me to be part of the program at their Annual Spring Benefit on Sunday, May 4. There will be tours, music and sparkling wine. I'm going to give a short talk on Hopper's legacy and how he has influenced me and other artists since his time.  The setting of Hopper House will do a lot of the talking for me.  Hopper, far more than many prominent artists of his generation, found his ideas in his immediate surroundings. The Hopper House Art Center, his boyhood home where he lived until he was approaching 30, in many ways was one of the key influences on how he saw the world. Above is one of his watercolors from the Currier Museum of Art . With its rhythm of irregular highlights and shuttered windows it's brimming with quirky personality. I believe that's in part because Hopper was open to seeing its potent...

This is the third of my posts about my visit to Winslow Homer's studio in Prouts Neck, Maine. My previous blogs on his studio can be found here and here . Here's one of the crown jewels of the Portland Museum of Art , Winslow Homer's oil Weatherbeaten . Below are the rocks on the shore by Homer's studio in nearby Prouts Neck. Homer's vatage point was a bit more to the right and down closer to the waves than the spot where I took the photo. Even with the profoundly different weather from what Homer chose (the day I visited the studio was ridiculously clear and sunny) you can identify some of same rocks depicted in Homer's oil. Looking north from Homer's shoreline. And looking south. Here is the single large upstairs room in the two story studio. The doorway opens out onto Homer's second floor blacony overlooking the Atlantic. The docent from the Portland Museum of Art leading the t...