A Vision of Nature

The Landscapes of
Philip Koch

November 7, 2004 - January 9, 2005
UMUC Arts Program Gallery
Lower Level
Inn and Conference Center
Adelphi, Maryland 

Opening Reception
Sunday, November 7
3-5 p.m.

RETROSPECTIVE : 1971 - 2004 

This exhibition is about Philip Koch and his creative endeavors over the past 33 years. It is a retrospective of his drawings, oil sketches and paintings, and pastels from 1971 until the latest painting in the show, just off his easel.  

On a philosophical level, the exhibition is a journey from his first artworks, which are characterized by exploration, learning, and the establishment of an impressive stylistic and iconographic vocabulary, to the latest ones, which communicate the excellence of mature pictorial means and personal expression.  

Koch is a Maryland artist and professor of fine art at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, one of the oldest and most acclaimed art schools in the country.  His journey as an artist began in his freshman year at Oberlin College, Ohio, when he decided to be a professional artist. Along with his concentration in studio art, he took various art history courses as an undergraduate and later as a graduate student at the University of Indiana, Bloomington. His immersion in the study of 17th-century Dutch landscape painting became an interest that remained a powerful influence on his art since then.

Other precursors include the Hudson River School (the first notable group of 19th-century American artists specializing in landscape), George Inness, Winslow Homer, the 20th-century modernist Rockwell Kent, and realist Edward Hooper.

Text on these pages reprinted from the brochure by Eva J. Allen, PhD.