Rackstraw Downes

"Rackstraw Downes: Onsite Paintings, 1972-2008" is the first significant survey of the work and methods of this British-born, Texas- and New York-based 'realist' panoramic painter, and features 25 works from Downes' earliest panoramic work, "A Thaw (1972)" through major examples of painting done in Maine, Texas, New York City and along the New Jersey shorelines. Downes' panoramic paintings, which he developed by studying seventeenth-century Dutch panoramic landscape painting possess a unique balance between realism and abstraction, timelessness and history. Painted from observation they are not 'snapshots' of a scene recreated in the studio; rather, they are chronicles of the human experience, records of social history as it evolves. This volume is a comprehensive compendium of the artist's career, from the current work to pieces that track the growth and development of his themes and concepts over three decades, and will contribute to the discourse concerning the changing nature of painting in the 21st century.