Top local artist stumbled into painting career

Robert Koch once turned down an art scholarship.

Yet after a 45-year career as an architect, the Naperville man is - ironically - enjoying a successful second career as a painter.

"I sort of backed into it inadvertently," he said. "I turned down the scholarship because I wasn't planning to embark on an art career."

Koch will be one of 150 artists exhibiting this weekend at the Riverwalk Fine Art Fair. He was named "best local artist" at last year's show.

In his first career as an architect, Koch worked on such buildings as the Air Force Academy, Northwest Community Hospital, and the University of Illinois's Chicago Center of Veterinary Medicine.

Locally, he was on the committee that designed the city of Naperville's logo.

Now in his second career, he paints landscapes in both oil and watercolors as well as nature scenes and wildlife.

Some of his most popular works are Irish landscapes, he said.

"I tried to do scenes of the United States, but I've painted European scenes as well," he said. "The Irish subjects are very popular in this area for obvious reasons."

Koch describes his style as all his own.

"I try to experiment with each watercolor only to a limited degree, so there's a similarity between all of them," he said. "Some artists will say 'oh that person is a student of so-and-so,' but I never really tried to do that. I just tried to create a decent painting but not a style that was affixed to another artist."

Some people call it a hobby, but Koch says his second career is truly a full-time job. Beyond painting and traveling to and from shows, he and wife Cathy also frame his pieces and build the crates for shipping the paintings.

Koch is a member of several watercolor societies and has had his artwork featured in shows nationwide. He'll display about 40 pieces of art at the Riverwalk this weekend.

"This show's physical location is an exception to many others. Many are in parks or in civic centers," he said. "It's kind of a nice setting, and I get to see a lot of people that I've known over the years."