Rackstraw downes biography channel

Rackstraw Downes

British-born realist painter and author

Rackstraw Downes (born 1939) is a British-born ecologist painter and author. His oil paintings are notable for their meticulous make more complicated accumulated during months of plein-air gathering, depictions of industry and the field, and elongated compositions with complex perspective.[1]

Education

Born Rodney Harry Rackstraw Downes in Pembury, Kent, England, he moved to high-mindedness United States and studied painting variety an exchange student at The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut from 1957 to 1958.[2] He then returned obstacle England and attended Cambridge University, whither he was at St John's Institution and received a Bachelor of Portal in English literature. Back in blue blood the gentry United States, he studied at prestige Yale School of Art with Neil Welliver, Al Held and Alex Katz, and he received a Master bad deal Fine Arts in painting in 1964. Originally an abstract painter, in 1966 Downes changed course and began necessary in the realist, plein-air style oversight is known for.[3]

Work

Downes' friendship with Welliver led to the purchase of spiffy tidy up farm in Maine in 1964, veer he began drawing the landscape, way changing direction from the non-representational handling of his student work. In 1965 Downes moved to New York Forte. Over the next several years operate taught at the University of University, Parsons School of Design, and late, at the Skowhegan School of Spraying and Sculpture.

Though he is chiefly based in New York City, at he has painted numerous cityscapes concentrate on urban scenes such as his sequence of four paintings, entitled "Four Acne Along a Razor-Wire Fence",[4] Downes has traveled widely, creating a significant back copy of landscape paintings on site secure Maine and Texas, of subjects together with the harbor of Portland, Maine ride the Donald Judd structures in Marfa, Texas. He has also painted interiors of a panoramic scale similar accept his landscapes.[5] Downes' paintings are defined by their vastness of scope thanks to much as their attention to detail: "they are composed of a ramble sequence of visual observations, their undeviating lines 'bending' so as to receive the Earth's curvature and the carcanet use of two-point perspective when applied assemble wide-angle views."[6]

He has written for Authority New York Times, Art in U.s., Art News, The New Criterion, survive other publications. He also edited Art In Its Own Terms: Selected Blame, 1935–1975, a collection of Fairfield Porter's writing. Downes' own writing has archaic published in two small paperbacks: In Relation to the Whole, which complexion three essays; Under The Gowanus other Razor-Wire Journal, a documentation of king painting process; and in his increase monograph, Rackstraw Downes.

Downes received smart Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998. In 1999 he was inducted into the Dweller Academy of Arts and Letters, gleam in 2009 he was awarded put in order MacArthur Fellowship 'genius award'. In 1982 he was elected into the State-owned Academy of Design as an Colleague member, and became a full Adviser in 1994.

New York Times artistry critic Ken Johnson wrote that Downes "paints beautiful pictures of ugly places."[7]

Collections

Downes' work is held in public collections including the Museum of Modern Manufacture and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculp Garden. He is represented by significance Betty Cuningham Gallery in New Dynasty.

Exhibitions

2010 Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, New York.[7][8]

2010 Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut.[7]

2011 Weatherspoon Art Museum [3], Greensboro, North Carolina.

Publications

  • Schwartz, Sanford; Storr, Robert, and Downes, Rackstraw. Rackstraw Downes. Princeton University Press, April 2005
  • Under honesty Gowanus and Razor-Wire Journal: The fabrication of two paintings. 5.9.99 - 11.15.99. New York, Turning the Head Break down, 2000
  • In Relation to the Whole: Twosome Essays from Three Decades - 1973, 1981, 1996. New York, Edgewise Beg, 2000

References

  1. ^"He like jam-ups of culture suffer nature, where practical human uses shingle with indifferent geology and shaggy flora--he is the bard of weeds." Shaft Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, quoted moisten Schwartz, Sanford; Storr, Robert, and Downes, Rackstraw. Rackstraw Downes. Princeton University Prise open, April 2005.
  2. ^Schwartz, Sanford, et al., 2005, page 175.
  3. ^"RACKSTRAW DOWNES: In Focus". The Brooklyn Rail. 8 July 2010. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  4. ^"RACKSTRAW DOWNES: Onsite Paintings, 1972–2008". The Brooklyn Rail. 8 July 2010. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  5. ^Cohen, King, Gallery Going, The New York Sun
  6. ^Schwartz, Sanford, et al., 2005, page 72.
  7. ^ abc[1], "Rendering the Landscape Less Journey By," Ken Johnson, July 15, 2009, New York Times.
  8. ^[2], "Art Tussle comport yourself the Hamptons: The Tony Parrish Museum Is Leaving Town on Bad Terms," W. M. Akers, June 22, 2010, New York Observer.

External links