Philip Koch Paintings

Willard Metcalf, The Golden Carnival, oil on canvas, Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY I've learned the most about making paintings that celebrate intense sunlight from Edward Hopper (1882-1967), who had to have painted the brightest sunlight of any of the early 20 century American artists. But Hopper was picking up on a tradition of the light-loving Impressionist artists who'd gone down the path before him.  Above is a landscape from my "first museum", Rochester's Memorial Art Gallery by my favorite of the American Impressionist painters, Willard Metcalf (1858-1925). It masterpiece of contrasting the warm ochres in the undulating hillside with the surprising cool blue-green hues in the water's reflections. It perfectly evokes the light of a late  afternoon just as the sun begins to speed up its descent to the horizon.  Metcalf, Winter Afternoon Metcalf's penetrating eye absolutely nailed brilliant sunlight, painting it with...

Here's Edward Hopper's  Pennsylvania Coal Town  from the Butler Institute of American Art . I love the contrast of the deeply saturated yellow ocher house against the bright whites of the figure's sleeve. And the shadowy  off-whites of the  window curtains draw you in with a sense of mystery. When people write about Hopper they so often turn to themes of emotional isolation and loneliness. They rarely talk about his color and his amazing gift for evoking the feeling of bright sunlight. Yet that's exactly what drew me to Hopper's work when I was starting out as a painter. Hopper in his 20's went to live in Paris three times. He saw the work of the French Impressionists first hand. He liked what he saw- particularly the brilliance of the way they rendered sunlight with dazzling color. Above is a Hopper oil of Paris from 1907. It is a symphony of creamy yellows, whites and grays.  One can't understand Hopper without giving his Impres...

Here's a painting I've always loved, Monet's oil Bathing at Grenoulliere from 1869. In it Monet seems transfixed by the ambient light that fills the partly shadowed foreground. It is so rhythmic I almost feel a little dizzy looking at it. I first ran across it in 1971  when I was in my MFA program in painting at Indiana University.  It was reproduced in one of the textbooks I read for an art history class on 19th century painting I took   Monet was alive when Hopper lived in Paris and the two could have met (they didn't, at least not literally). But if you look at the some of the work the young Hopper was doing during his stays in Paris, you realize Hopper had indeed had long "conversations" with Monet's paintings. He intently studied the older painter's ideas. In particular, Hopper drank up the French Impressionist's sense of lightened overall tonalities and how he played them off against just a few dark accents.  Here's Hoppe...

  Here is  Sally,  an oil portrait by the American painter Joseph DeCamp . Decamp was from Cincinnatti, studied in Duseldorf, Germany, and ended up in Boston where he became associated wth the other impressionist influenced painters there often called "The Ten" (including Edmund Tarbell and Frank Benson). These  painters coupled a fascination with light effects with a love of some of the older and darker tonalities of 19th century painting.  With the excitement that came with the introduction of modernism in the first decades of the 20th century, their paintings were hung less prominently in American Museums for decades. It was our loss. Happily, interest in their work is swelling again. The Sally  oil above I think remarkably expressive. Characteristic of DeCamp's work, the sensitivity to light effects is masterful. Look at how beautifully he shines a brighter, cooler white light on the woman's sailors blouse than anywhere else in the canvas. In co...

Sometimes I'm asked if I only like art from the past. Far from it. But there is a reason I so often write about work done some time ago. It's often one of the best places to pan for gold. If you go to art museums or art galleries a lot, you are guaranteed to run into some work that leaves you cold. For professional artists, the problem gets worse, and you're likely to feel driven up the wall by some things you see. Being committed to making paintings and staying at one's easel for years brings with it a deeply emotional investment. It's an occupational hazard for artists. I was at a major American art museum yesterday and saw work that made my heart leap, and things that offered me very little. Generally I think it's more productive to spend my energies talking about work I find exciting rather than running down art I think is unsuccessful, especially when those artists aren't around to defend themselves. One of the artists I love to talk about is George...