Rackstraw Downes was born in England in 1939 and is celebrated for his more than sixty years of painting and writing about art. His oil paintings are recognized for the meticulous detail accumulated by the Artist during months of plein-air sessions studying industrial zones, highway structures, and landscapes, which he depicts from a low standpoint resulting in elongated compositions capturing broad expanses with complex perspective.
Downes thinks of himself as a painter of his surroundings – his environment – drawing inspiration from locations as diverse as metropolitan New York, rural Maine, the New Jersey Meadowlands, and coastal and inland Texas. Without resorting to the use of photography, his compositions feature horizons that bend according to the way the eye naturally perceives. Downes often works in series, examining single scenes from multiple angles, over time, and in the process reveals changing qualities of light and shadow as well as changes in his own point of view.
Downes was born in England in 1939, becoming a United States citizen in 1980. He received his BA from the University of Cambridge in 1961 and his BFA and MFA from Yale University in 1963 and 1964 respectively. During his time at Yale, where he initially was painting abstractly, he was encouraged toward naturalism by teachers and charismatic elders including Neil Welliver and Alex Katz. With their influence, Downes not only purchased a farm in Maine in 1964, but he took to painting landscapes, his prominent brushstrokes becoming progressively smaller as his commitment to perception grew. Downes moved to New York City the following year where he is still based today.
Downes is the recipient of the Guggenheim (1998) and MacArthur (2009) Fellowships and is inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1999). A retrospective, Rackstraw Downes: Onsite Paintings, 1972-2008, was organized by the Parrish Art Museum in 2010. It traveled to the Portland Museum of Art, ME, and the Weatherspoon Museum in Greensboro, NC. His work is in the collections of museums around the country including The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art.