Statement
Walter Koch is a mixed media painter who started as a child with a box of crayons brightly colouring the rectangles formed by the columns and lines of large ledger sheets at his Dad’s office in Mozambique.
Today when he paints the process involves a compelling dialogue between him and the canvas. The conversation starts with the first colour/shape that is put down and grows into phrases of engaging bold colours and forms. Each phrase evokes a response and so the work evolves and explodes into painted paragraphs, chapters and essays. The process discovers stimulating new ground and the end is often unexpected.
His childhood love for vibrant colour is evident and the shapes flow with spur-of-the-moment gestures that form fresh graphic marks on the canvas. The shapes - inspired by tagging, graffiti, symbols, random patterns and African rock paintings – are bold visual elements that express fun and a cheerful enjoyment of life.
Koch also works on paper using watercolour and airbrush. He explores the transparency of this medium that allows light to reflect from the surface of the paper which gives a luminous effect of wet colour melting into wet colour contained by the masked hard edge of airbrushed areas.