Philip Koch: Landscapes and Hopper Interiors

Edward Hopper House presents a selection of paintings and drawings by Philip Koch (b. 1948) from Feb. 14 to March 12, 2015.  The exhibition will include large vibrant landscape paintings as well as smaller oils and charcoal drawings of the interiors of both Edward Hopper’s Truro, MA, studio and of Hopper’s Nyack home. 

At the start of his career in the late 1960s, Koch was an abstract painter, but he soon turned to a more realist style when, he says, “[Edward] Hopper came along and tapped me on the shoulder.”   Since 1983, Koch has had 15 residencies in Hopper’s home and studio in Truro, MA, on Cape Cod.  He has also painted in Hopper’s bedroom at the Edward Hopper House.  Spending time in the spaces inhabited by Hopper, seeing the same views, and experiencing the play of light and shadow in the rooms and on the surrounding houses has provided Koch with a unique understanding of Hopper’s work and process.  Koch has used that understanding as a guide as he has forged his own artistic identity. 

Koch, who is a Professor of Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, makes regular sojourns to upstate New York and New England, following in the footsteps and painting the same views as the likes of Edward Hopper, Winslow Homer, and the Hudson River School artists he so admires.  "Each generation" says Koch "needs a new image of what our earth looks like in our time. There will always be a need for landscape painters to show us where we live."