Don Gray

 Utilizing a very sophisticated, atmospheric oil technique, John Koch paints his surroundings, and it is evident that they have a very personal, perhaps indefinable meaning for him. He is a romantic whose paintings of his Central Park apartment somehow express and coincide with his own interior as a man and an artist. Yet these mysterious rooms, like Vermeer's, are often connected to the outside world by a window that, in this case, appears to have both the quality of a threat to the inner security and a longed-for escape from restriction.

 How important is the window in "End of Day" where a man sleeping on an orange couch is drawn by the picture's perspective to the luminous rectangle while the room itself and the objects within keep a silent vigil. The window, man on the couch and cloth-draped dark chair are three very richly different and expressive points of a compositional and psychological triangle. What opposite poles of thought, being and symbol they represent.

 In his rather stiffly formal (in terms of mood and composition) "Cocktail Party," he arranges his figures in a shallow, façade-like space in front of a wall that echoes the picture plane. For the later "Summer Party," more easily-posed, relaxed figures are placed as reference points in much deeper space, an enlarged, cathedral-like room with a small studio light at the very apex of the picture.

 The artist is in love with light as it caresses human flesh, glints on glassware and metal, shines strongly from varnished floors or falls softly through an implied window onto a rug. And, of course, lamps have a way of glowing around corners or from alcoves in such a manner as to be lovely and luminous in themselves, but also serving to expand and define space. Like life itself, darkness and shadow are as much a part of this world as the light, and both are so richly used and intertwined as to suggest infinite poetic, spiritual and symbolic associations.

 John Koch does not paint simply surfaces, though he does that very well. His work has that certain inexplicable something...call it character, or the fact that he has a sense of the mystery that underlies all things. There is a transmuting enchantment of all objects through the unique chemistry of his personality. Whatever it is, they are extremely rich and expressive works with more than a hint of melancholy, a suggestion of possible loss and a deep emotionalism that may not be immediately apparent because of the exquisite technical and compositional control.