Philip Koch Paintings

The first four years of my life we lived a house with a sandbox in our backyard. It was a substantial wooden construction that my parents had replenished with new sand by the time I, the youngest of three, came along. Pulling my hands across the sand's soft surface delighted my tiny fingers. And best of all were the amazing patterns that magically emerged on the sand in my fingers' wake. In a funny way, that sandbox was my first art school. Humans have been "playing in the dirt" like that for our whole history. It's embedded in minds, this love of making simple shapes and patterns on a flat surface. Here above is an oil by Willem de Kooning (1904 - 1997). In addition to being vividly colored, the painting shows some of that "sandbox playfulness" with the artist dragging his brush, scratching back over previously drawn shapes, wiping out and so on. Looked at as a design on a flat surface, the painting has a certain appeal. Also the woman's spac...

Let's conclude my guided tour of George Billis Gallery's current show Earth's Shadow: Landscapes by Philip Koch in New York (note: like many Chelsea art district galleries, Billis Gallery is closed for their holiday break and will reopen the exhibit Jan. 2 - 19, 2013).  I'm happy to report one of the major pieces in the show, Otter Cove , will be heading to its new home with some collectors in London. Here is  Northern Pines, Morning,  oil on panel, 12 x 24". It was painted on the same small pond that was the source for another oil in the show, Still Pine. M y wife and I discovered the source by wandering down an unmarked dirt road on our honeymoon thirty years ago in Acadia National Park in Maine.   Sheltered by the surrounding forests, the water there is always calm and can be counted on to have stunning reflections of the far shore's frieze of pines. I like to return every so often to work there. I have to smile thinking about the first...

Searching through my flat file drawers for another drawing this week, I ran across an early drawing I made, Edward Hopper's Kitchen,  vine charcoal, 8 x 10", 2002. This is the tiny table and chairs Hopper sat at to eat his meals in his S.Truro, Massachusetts studio.  It's funny as Hopper was 6'5" tall and the idea of him squeezing his lanky frame into this tiny space makes me laugh. The kitchen is so small that to get this view I had to back up and set up my French easel in the adjoining bedroom. Hopper was a guy who put painting first, and when he designed his Cape Cod studio he lavishly devoted most of the space to his painting room. The rest of the studio makes you wonder if it wasn't designed as a doll house. Long ago when I was just starting to learn to paint at Oberlin College, I shared a studio space with another student who was a year ahead of me. She was energetic and articulate and loved abstract expressionist painting. She in...