Philip Koch Paintings

Philip Koch, Lieutenant Island Bridge , oil on panel, 15 x 20" mid '80's When you first meet someone you can feel all sorts of emotions about them that are triggered by their outer appearance. Half the time your initial impressions later prove accurate, other times not at all.  One of the big reasons we have art and music is their usefulness as tools to dig below the surface. One thing all artists do is spend the time it takes to have a relationship with their subject, whatever it is. They use the time to dig down to the bedrock.  Let me show you a concrete example of what I'm talking about. The above oil painting was painted on Cape Cod in the town of Wellfleet. There's a place there that intrigues many people, a small land mass named Lieutenant Island that juts out into Cape Cod Bay. At high tide the approach road is mostly surrounded and in some places covered by water. Landscape painters wander around a lot waiting for something to strike the...

John Singer Sargent,  (American, sort of, 1856 1925)  A Boating Party, oil, 1889 Here are three great oils I saw this fall in the RISD Art Museum in Providence, RI when I was driving home from my last residency in Edward Hopper's studio on Cape Cod. All three were painted between 1898-1900. Paintings teach us about new ways of seeing. In the Sargent above, squint your eyes at the picture and see how its surface is mostly an overall grey-green tone. Popping out of that middle tone are a handful of bright white spots in the boating party's clothes. Not quite as dramatic are the small off-white spots of the sky. Like someone hopping across a stream by stepping on a few exposed stones, Sargent positions his spots of white to create a distinctive rhythm. Imagine how the painting would collapse if the artist had allowed a lot more highlights to creep into his picture. It's a radical painting in that way. Winslow Homer (American1836-1910), On a Lee Shore , oil, 1900 ...

The longer I paint the more my eye focuses on how great painters presented their ideas rather than what they painted. Here are three wonderful paintings where the great 19th century American Winslow Homer gives our eyes some delightful fashion tips (OK, I'm kidding about the fashion tips part, but he does show us how inventive he can be in his paintings. Images courtesy Art Renewal Center). Let's take a look at what Homer can do with arranging his costumes to pump up the expressive volume. At the top is Homer's watercolor Early Evening . The two women at the right have the spiffiest aprons. Both women stand totally erect, and without their aprons blowing off to the left, they'd look like two telephone poles. Almost undoubtedly the diagonal sweep of the aprons was something Homer consciously inserted into his scene, knowing it would breath life into his women. It's a note of visual surprise. Without it, these two women wouldn't draw our attention the way they do....