Philip Koch Paintings

( Last week was busy. Had two openings. Above is part of the Inside Edward Hopper's Truro Studio: Paintings by Philip Koch  at the Edward Hopper House Art Center in Nyack, New York that will run through July 1, 2012. As regular readers of this blog know, Hopper was the most important influence on my direction as a painter. At the right that's the railing of the steps that lead up to the second floor of his boyhood home. And below is a photo from last Thursday evening in Newport News, Virginia at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center . Michael Preble, PFAC's Curator, assembled a truly beautiful exhibition as part of PFAC's 50th Anniversary, Who We Are: Past and Present  that shows a selection of artists who have exhibited over the years in their galleries. In July through October of 2011 PFAC hosted Unbroken Thread showing 50 of my paintings that was an amazingly well presented show. I'm honored PFAC invited to be part of their anniversary comm...

Here's the entrance to Saginaw Art Museum's current exhibit of my paintings.  Unbroken Thread: The Art of Philip Koch  (through Feb. 19, 2012). The photo is taken from the beautiful glass enclosed walkway that leads from the Museum's original 19th century Mansion house to one of its new wings. Below I've turned around and photographed the doorway to the walkway currently full of handsome metal sculptures by David Holtslander. At the right is my oil  The Voyage of Memory , a piece inspired by the 19th century American painter Thomas Cole's series of four paintings,  The Voyage of Life  (I had the pleasure of seeing them again just last weekend down at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.). At the left is my oil  Otter Cove , which I'll return to later. Below is me posing with an oil by another of my early favorite artists, the American John F. Kensett. It's  Study for the Lakes of Killarny ,   that Kensett painted in 1856 while on...

Here are some paintings from the Midwest Museum of American Art's Permanent Collection that were on display in the galleries adjoining their display of my own exhibition Unbroken Thread: The Art of Philip Koch. Above is an oil by John Elwood Bundy (1853-1933) that the museum lists as Untitled (Indiana Landscape). I was drawn to it as it reminds me so much of the landscape I used to paint out around Bloomington and Nashville, Indiana when I was first venturing outside to paint as a grad student at Indiana University. Bundy probably did this one mostly outdoors too. He deftly focuses our attention on some trees far more than others by limiting his use of strong darks to only a few places in the painting. As it's mostly done in subtle umbers and yellows, this heightened sensitivity to tonalities is critical for the warm glowing atmosphere that ties the painting together. Bundy moved to the small city of Richmond, Indiana and taught at Earlham College's Art Department. He pain...

Frank Stella, Harran II , 1967 Here are two painters who were among the first artists I started looking at when I first studied painting in the 1960's at Oberlin College. The top image is by Frank Stella, a painter who was the darling of the moment when I first started paying attention to comtemporary art. He was one the favorites of my first teacher Christopher Muhlert. Since I greatly liked my first teacher, it was easy to be influenced by his enthusiasm. And Stella's work at that time was easy to like. It seemed to celebrate clear clean color and simple bold geometry. Usually done on a huge scale, it simply bowled you over. A lot of Stella's work employed masking tape and acrylic paint. Needing a place to start my own explorations in painting I figured that was as good a place as any to jump in the pool. So I grabbed a roll of tape and made some simple paintings of sharp edged rectangles of color. It's a quick way of working, and I made lots of them. I noticed ...

Philip Koch, Green Spring II, oil on canvas, 40 x 60", 2009 This painting was posted for a while earlier this week and then taken back to the studio so I could work on it again. About a pound of oil pigment later, she's back to debut at the ball once again. I became aware the balances needed tuning. The sky became darker and I pruned some of the trees and finally demolished a house. This is a painting I began sometime ago and it was based on a plein air oil. As it became a larger piece back in the studio, the centrifugal forces that always threaten to break out in all directions took over for awhile. It is a little like calming down a herd of half-wild horses and getting them back into a corral. You have to be patient and keep after them, employing both a little charm and a steeled determination. Even so, there is a whole lot left in this painting. I tend to like paintings that aim to tell one a great deal. So often real life is overcrowded with events, movements, moods and s...

Philip Koch, October , oil on panel, 13 x 13 1/2", 1978 Here's a painting I just took out of an older simple frame and will be taking to my framer for something a little more substantial this week. It's from a very long time ago. The fall of 1978 and my then girlfriend (and later to be my wife) Alice were taking our first trip out of town together. So it's an event that sticks in my mind. I started a painting on a beautiful but freezing morning in the front yard of my old undergraduate school friend Larry Farmer's place in the little town of Pottersville, NJ. It was absolutely freezing, but I cajoled Alice into posing in the front yard wearing only a light sweater (if I'm going to suffer for my art, why shouldn't other people too?). I had met Larry my fist semester at Oberlin College back when we both had other futures sketched out for ourselves. Larry was a Government Major I believe and I was intending to become a Sociologist. You could say we watched eac...

Early September of 1966. It was my very first day of classes my freshman year at Oberlin College. I was feeling more than a little bit intimidated and the fact it was pouring enough to soak the bottom of my pants wasn't helping. I'd come to Oberlin intending to be a Sociology major and my very first lecture at 8:00 a.m. that first day was by a new sociology prof who had never taught before. He was pretty dreadful as a lecturer and I was feeling the balloon of my enthusiasm for my college experience begin to deflate just a little. Oberlin had a strict series of required courses one had to take outside one's major. Figuring I'd get at least one of them out of the way early so I could concentrate later on on my Sociology, I had signed up for Art History 101, a world art survey class. So braving the downpour once again I marched across the College Square and entered the schools largest lecture hall and sat down for the second lecture of my college career. The prof decided ...

Following this Rembrandt ink wash landscape are three more of his amazing drawings. Back in the late 1960's I was a studio art major at Oberlin College. There were only three artists on the faculty, and of those only one could have been called an effective teacher and a good artist, Paul Arnold, a printmaker. I had the good fortune to be able to augment the limited art instruction. I spend the entire summers of '68 and - '69 living in New York City. I went to the art museums over and over again, my eyes drinking up all the delicious lessons on their walls. And I went full time to the Art Student's League of New York, one of the country's most venerable art schools. It was pretty good too. I made hundreds of drawings from the model and did my first figure paintings in oil. What was marvelous was for the first time I was around other art students with more experience than I had, and in some cases a desire equal to mine to plunge deep into painting and try hard make so...

Philip Koch, Fall at Lake Lemon, oil on canvas, 16 x 19", 1971 Philip Koch, Birches in the Forest, oil on canvas, 20 x 30", 1985 More reminiscing as I put paintings back into my just renovated storage room in my new basement (Maya Angelou and George Clooney are rumored to be planning to attend the official dedication ceremony I'm planning for later in the week). These two paintings are both from earlier decades in my career. The first was painted during my first year in graduate school at Indiana University in Bloomington. I had been doing a series of surreal landscape paintings without using any photos for reference nor any direct observation . One day one of the painting faculty at Indiana, Barry Gealt, stuck his head in the door to my studio one afternoon, looked over the work for a moment, and then amicably said "Why don't you try painting outside sometime. I think you'd really like it." Then in a flash he excused himself and disappeared down the ha...