Philip Koch Paintings

The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA is bringing me to give a talk on Edward Hopper's life on Cape Cod on July 31, 2014. It is part of their programming around their new exhibition The Unknown Hopper: Edward Hopper as Illustrator  that runs at the Museum through October 26. Hopper was drawn to aspects of the world that he felt hadn't been explored enough. He found unexpected meaning in rooftops, glimpses through windows and in humble backyard settings. And it is intriguing that when his wife Jo inherited money he chose to build his studio outside New York on Cape Cod. Cape Cod, especially its outer section from Eastham out to Truro and Provincetown is a pretty distinctive landscape with a look all its own. If one looks at the history of artists who made the Cape one of their subjects, nobody in my opinion nailed it like Hopper.  Above is one of my own paintings, Edward Hopper's Road , oil on canvas, 40 x 60" that is in the collection of the Midwest Mu...

Isalos Fine Art in Stonington, ME just received four new Philip Koch oil paintings for their summer season. The gallery is owned by Michael and Rebecca Daugherty (Rebecca is also a painter and that's her oil of the gallery above). Last summer one of the gallery's feature shows was a solo exhibition,  Inside Edward Hopper's World: Paintings by Philip Koch, that focused just on my work done in Edward Hopper's former studio on Cape Cod and his boyhood home in Nyack, NY.  Here's Michael Daugherty standing in front of some of my work in the show last summer in his gallery. The show did well and garnered a feature article by Bob Keyes  in the 8/11/13 edition of the Maine Sunday Telegram (you can read the article here ). This year we're showing my landscapes. One of the new quartet is my Adirondack Lake: Red, oil on panel, 10 x 7 1/2", 2014. It was painted on Lake Placid, NY near where they held the Winter Olympics. ...

My painting Banner , oil on panel, 24 x 18", 2014 is in the new group exhibition Summer Pleasures  at Thomas Deans Fine Art in Atlanta. There is an opening reception Friday, June 13 from 6-8 p.m. The show runs through Aug. 2, 2014.  It is a painting based entirely on memory.  And it comes with some history. As I often do I worked out this image over the course of years. Below is the initial version, an oil on panel from 2008 measuring 10 x 7 1/2". And it too stemmed from events farther back. About ten years ago my wife Alice and I went on a painting excursion to northern Vermont. One morning I got rained out from working with my portable easel in the field but found a wonderful alternative view from the breakfast room of our B&B in Burlington. Situated on a hill, it looked out on a towering pine that framed a distant view of Lake Champlain and the even more distant Adirondack Mountains of New York.  The pine just spoke to me. It had a broken rhythm ...

Philip Koch , Memorial , oil on panel, 18 x 36”, 2010 Last Friday I delivered four new paintings to Somerville Manning Gallery in Greenville, Delaware, just outside of Wilmington. It's an extraordinary gallery in many ways. For example as I brought my work in and placed my paintings against the wall I looked up to see hanging above them a large oil by the 19th century master painter John Singer Sargent (!). Their current exhibit, the impressive American and European Masters, is up through June 14.  Here is a bit of background on each of my new oil paintings in the gallery. As a boy growing up in an unsettled woods on the shore of Lake Ontario outside of Rochester, NY, I was deeply impressed by the power of moonlight to illuminate the shadowy forest. Years later when my wife and I honeymooned on Mt. Desert Island in Maine I fell in love with the vast panorama of small islands one sees looking south from the summit of Mt. Desert’s Cadillac Mountain. For my...

Here are the concluding five oils in my current exhibit at Art Essex Gallery in Essex, CT (through June 7, 2014). You can read about the other pieces in this 15 painting show in my two previous blog posts here and here . Below are two of my oils in the Gallery's front window (upper right and lower left). Above is The Reach III , oil on panel, 24 x 36". It's a highly autobiographical painting. My father used to take me sailing at night on Lake Ontario when I was 10 and 11. Frankly I found it a little scary but figured if he was there it must be OK. Sometimes we'd go out when there was a full moon shining through the clouds, an image that's firmly implanted in my memory as the essence of beauty and mystery.  Sadly he died unexpectedly when I had just turned 13. Memories of those nocturnal sails are something I want to hold onto. Fortunately for a painter there's a ready way to do that at hand. I suspect this back story accounts for ...

Philip Koch's wife Alice at Art Essex Gallery's exhibit of Koch's paintings. Continuing my tour of my 15 painting show now up at  Art Essex Gallery  in Essex, CT through June 7, 2014. Here are five more of the displayed works. Last year I showed a major oil at George Billis Gallery in New York , Horizon, 40 x 60" based on the ideas I originally worked out in the small oil above, Northern Sky: Yellow. Modest in size, a painting like this plays a critical role in my studio practice. For the first couple of decades I was painting I always did all my experimenting and searching right on surface of my larger canvases. I saw this was a way to embrace immediacy. An artist after all feels a certain urgency as they work to bring their paintings to life. I just wanted to dive in. That method led to a lot of canvases I am very proud of to this day. But overtime I came to see that sometimes slowing down could make me see more deeply into the worlds I w...

    Philip Koch at the Art Essex Gallery opening     of the exhibit May 17. Through June 7, 2014 Art Essex Gallery in Essex, CT has a wonderful show of 15 of my oil paintings on display. One of my collectors contacted me to say they wouldn't be able to make it to Connecticut and asked if I could give a "tour" of the show on this blog. Here are the first five paintings, starting with some of the smaller oils. I'll follow up in the next couple of days with the remaining ten pieces. There's a funny story about the the smallest painting in the show above, Lupines,  oil on panel, 6 x 4 1/2". I was up in Maine on the first morning of a 5 day painting trip near Boothbay Harbor. Came upon a terrific small pine-studded island about 50 yards off shore. Excited, I immediately dove in and two hours later had a very promising 24" wide oil more than half completed. The next morning I was pumped as I returned to the spot to finish it.  But Maine...