Philip Koch Paintings

  Art New England's July/August issue carries Carl Little's review of Ogunquit Museum of American Art's exhibition of Koch's paintings.

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...

Marion Boyd Allen (1862-1941), Portrait of Anna Vaughn Hyatt , 1915 Continuing with a few short comments about paintings that especially struck me on my visit to  Maier Museum of Art  at Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA. Sometimes you come across an artist whose work is so strong it makes you wonder why they're not better known. That's how it felt seeing Maier Museum of Art' s large oil by Marion Boyd Allen,   Portrait of Anna Vaughn Hyatt.     The figure of Hyatt is powerful and looks assured as she sculpts a horse and rider. It seems so fitting that the Maier Museum acquired this painting at a time when Randolph College was an all women's school.                       Installation view of the museum gallery with the Allen painting in a commanding position.     John Sloan, Sun and Wind on the Roof , oil on canvas, 1915 Ever since I studied painting in the same studio where John Sloan taught his c...

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...

Albert Bierstadt, Niagara, oil on paper laid down on canvas, 1869 One of the things that sustains me as a landscape painter is understanding I am part of an historic movement of artists who took delight in our planet. Each generation of landscape painters adds their own contemporary voice to a chain of paintings stretching back hundreds of years. Especially in our time of impending climate crisis reigniting the deep strain of environmental sentiment that runs all through American landscape art is part of my personal mission. This week Anna Marley, the Curator of Historic American Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, very kindly gave me and my wife a personal tour of her major exhibition From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early American Republic  shining a light on the earlier beginnings of landscape painting our country. Contrary to the usual understanding, Marley shows the much better known...

Philip Koch, Coke Ovens, Leetonia, vine charcoal, 12 x 9 inches, 2017 Last week the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College in Ohio purchased one of my works for their permanent collection. The Allen is widely regarded as one of the best college art museums in the country. Museum Director Andria Derstine made the selection of the above drawing from a number of my works on paper. The Allen was the biggest influence in my decision my Freshman year to drop my intended Sociology major and become a painter. It is deeply satisfying to see my art career come full circle and have my work enter the Museum.  It's an odd subject for a drawing- two gaping dark openings on an otherwise sun drenched hillside. These mysterious caves are long abandoned underground coke ovens. The subject seemed ripe with potential. The irregular black mouths of these caves suggest all sorts of possible meanings- some perhaps a bit eerie but mysteriously attractive at the same time. They're a r...

Edwin Dickinson, Interior, oil on beaverboard, 1916, Philadelphia Museum of Art The tantalizing composition above challenges us to try to explain what's going on in this pile of figures. Exceptionally odd as it is it's so well painted it's compelling. It's one of the oils by Edwin Dickinson that has recently entered the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This week we drove up from Baltimore to the Philadelphia Museum of Art . To mark the gift the museum recently received of six oils by the painter Edwin Dickinson (American 1891-1978) Kathleen Foster, the museum's Senior Curator of American Art, organized Between Nature and Abstraction: Edwin Dickinson and Friends. The show pairs Dickinson's work with that of artists whose work and time intersect Dickinson's. The exhibition concludes Feb. 10, 2019- if you hurry you can see it. Edwin Dickinson, Self Portrait, oil on canvas, 1940 Philadelphia Museum of Art The show's t...