Eugene Koch
I have lived in Stonington, ME since 1987. Before that I lived in the White Mts in Tamworth, NH for ten years. Since 1991 I worked at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, eventually becoming the Facilities manager. I recently retired from Haystack in May, 2022. My job was seasonal, so it provided me with a long stretch of studio time most winters. I have three children from a first marriage, and I currently live with Julie Morringello, an artist and designer, and my 11 year old daughter, Mitike, in the same old house I moved into in 1987.
The underlying focus of my work is the use of line in its many manifestations. I’m fascinated by how lines loosely layered horizontally can evoke water, and if you flip that drawing 90˚ it is like the bark of trees. I love putting down a few random strokes and then connecting them in a meandering way to produce images that seem like maps until you start looking at the negative space between those lines. I love layering repeated simple lines that morph into a surprising solidity. I love how a simple line on a page can become a large group of sculptural lines stuck in a beach or field, bearing witness to the world around us. I love scratching deep lines into a surface with a triangular paint scraper and discovering what emerges from layers of solid color. I love drawing organic sensuous lines and then trying to analyze them with straight lines, and being surprised by the crazy optics that result. I am always amazed how using a line has taken me by surprise, how such lines lead to what lies beneath, to the core of things.
