ARTIST’S STATEMENT "My paintings are a contemporary re-imagining of the romantic panoramas of the great 19th century American landscape painters. These early artists found the New England moutains and coast a sufficient springboard to forge a powerful art from their deep and emotional response to nature. The land they painted seemed to them a new Eden. In our time with its ecological degradation, the symbolic value of this Eden seems at once more remote and yet more urgently needed. Making a painting of the fruitful primordial wilderness freshens the winds of my own energy and optimism. Its song calls me back again painting after painting. Wilderness and the meeting of the land and the seas are among the most deeply burried chapters of our common origins. They are portraits of an often forgotten part of ourselves. I feel these paintings are a tool, a bit of practical magic to help the viewers reconnect with their own natures and their deeper resources." Philip Koch