Art
Alone in the Dying of the Light
One thing that comes across in the drawings of Rackstraw Downes is the austere, almost monastic life he has lived in order to make art.
Rackstraw Downes
Art
The Intertwined Lives of Artists in a Community in Rural Maine
The artists in Slab City Rendezvous influenced, nurtured, collaborated with, and painted one another, merging into one big happy family.
Test 2018 posts
The Radical Possibility of Seeing What Is Front of You
All of Rackstraw Downes's work derives from the simple, everyday act of observing your surroundings.
Test 2018 posts
Painter Rackstraw Downes’s Methodical Vision to Extract Poetry from the Mundane
As many artists develop visual ideas through fits of revision and reworking, the consistency in the evolution of paintings in Rackstraw Downes's current exhibition is remarkable.
Art
Can I Get a Witness? Working from Observation
Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects is a long and narrow space, somewhere between a bowling alley and a railroad apartment, on the Lower East Side. It is within this rather confined space that Marshall Price, curator at the uptown National Academy of Art, installed eleven paintings by artists committed
Interview
Painting Is a Metaphor: An Interview with Rackstraw Downes
Rackstraw Downes’s recent paintings are currently on view at Betty Cuningham Gallery. Born in 1939 in Kent, England, Downes now lives between New York City and Presidio, Texas. Well known for his panoramic landscapes, Downes works for months on site in both urban and rural surroundings. He is often
Art
An Implied Critique of Sound Bite Society
Rackstraw Downes doesn’t seem like a radical. He is an understated Englishman who paints understated American landscapes. But when you think about how much of modern and contemporary art relies on juxtaposition or exaggeration for effects, Downes’s approach begins to seem downright revolutionary. “M