Philip Koch Paintings

Philip Koch, The Arrival, oil on panel, 45 x 60", 2004 Collection of Susan and Michael Hughes, Baltimore, MD When I married Alice in 1982 we went on a honeymoon to Acadia National Park in Maine. As most newlywed couples do, we spent the time working on paintings. The title of a painting used to matter much less to me years ago when I got most of my ideas for paintings marching around with my portable easel. Simple descriptors like "Three Pines Near the Highway" served me just fine. Over time though I had grown fascinated with using the image of the landscape in a more mythical fashion. Often now I think of my paintings showing a glimpse of a world that exists long before or long after our present time. Maybe they exist outside of time altogether. They come about after engaging in a long, elaborate daydream. My job as the artist is to make that gel into a mental image with actual solid form and real spaces. It's not easy. What helps me is imagining every possible aspe...

Philip Koch, Moon Dance, vine charcoal, 8 x 10", 2009 There are two reasons I avoid photography. I'll start with the real reason. My father worked for Eastman Kodak as an optical physicist. For the entire time I knew him he was doing work for the US military that was classified. And he never once told anyone in the family what the work was beyond that it involved light and lenses. I couldn't help but notice that my dad didn't seem to like his job very much as he came home in a dark mood almost every night. In his defense, he was a very kind man and, despite his troubles with depression, his affection for me was apparent. And it meant the world to me. Still, using the logic of a child, I concluded that cameras and lenses must be bad for you. My mother's dad also worked for Eastman Kodak and was early on very prominent in the company, being the inventor of the original Kodachrome color film process. He had fallen in love with his secretary at Kodak. When she became p...