Tuesday 26 January 2010 Rackstraw Downes: Onsite Paintings 1972–2008

Published by D Giles Limited in association with the Parrish Art Museum, Rackstraw Downes: Onsite Paintings 1972–2008 is an important overview of the work and methods of this British-born ‘realist’ panoramic painter (b. 1939) who was given the MacArthur Fellowship genius award in 2009. It features a fascinating interview with the artist which offers an insight into his creative process over the last 35 years.

A comprehensive compendium of the artist’s growth and development Rackstraw Downes: Onsite Painting 1972–2008 features 25 works which track the progress of his themes and concepts over three decades. Beginning with Downes’s earliest landscape paintings, Dunham’s Farm Pond (1972) and The Dam at Fairfield (1974), this volume traces his career from the plein-air paintings done in Maine to his later signature painting of the vast panoramas of the West Texas landscape near his part-time home in Presidio, Texas, and the intricate urbanscapes of New York City.

Downes’s panoramic paintings, developed by studying seventeenth-century Dutch landscapes, are painted onsite using a portable easel. Though based on careful study, his paintings are not truthful depictions in a photographic sense – in fact Downes neither uses photographs nor owns a camera. He takes creative liberties that a photorealist painter would not, and because the works are painted from observation over a period of several weeks or months, they are not “snapshots” of a scene recreated in the studio. Rather, as he states, they are about “trying to capture something uncapturable”.

Publication accompanies an exhibition at Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York, June 20– August 8, 2010; Portland Museum of Art, Maine, December 16, 2010– March 20, 2011; Weatherspoon Art Museum of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, May 28, 2011–August 21, 2011.

The Author
Klaus Ottmann is the Robert Lehman Curator, Parrish Art Museum, and an independent scholar. His most recent publications include Yves Klein: Works/Writings/Interview (2010) and Thought Through My Eyes: Writing About Art 1984–2004 (2005).

RACKSTRAW DOWNES: ONSITE PAINTINGS 1972–2008

112 pages, 240 x 280mm (11 x 9½ in.), landscape
44 colour illustrations, hardback
Text: Up to 11,000 words
ISBN: 978 1 904832 73 7 (13 digit)
ISBN: 1 904832 73 3 (10 digit)
Price: US$39.95/UK£24.95
Publication date: June, 2010
Publisher: D Giles Limited, London

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