Rackstraw Downes

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. Though primarily based in New York City, Downes has travelled widely and has created a significant number of landscape paintings on site including the harbour of Portland, Maine, and the Donald Judd structures in Marfa, Texas.

Downes's panoramic paintings, which he developed by studying 17th-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.

The book also features a wide-ranging interview between the artist and Terrie Sultan, director of Parrish Art Museum

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