Rackstraw Downes

Rackstraw Downes (born 1939) is a British-born realist painter and author. His oil paintings are notable for their meticulous detail accumulated during months of plein-air sessions, depictions of industry and the environment, and elongated compositions with complex perspective.

Born Rodney Harry Rackstraw Downes in Pembury, Kent, England, he moved to the United States and studied painting as an exchange student at The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut from 1957-58. He then returned to England and attended Cambridge University, where he was at St John's College and received a Bachelor of Arts in English literature. Back in the United States, he studied at the Yale School of Art with Neil Welliver, Al Held and Alex Katz, and he received a Master of Fine Arts in painting in 1964. Originally an abstract painter, in 1966 Downes changed course and began working in the realist, plein-air style he is known for.

Downes' friendship with Welliver led to the purchase of a farm in Maine in 1964, where he began drawing the landscape, thus changing direction from the non-representational manner of his student work. In 1965 Downes moved to New York City. Over the next several years he taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Parsons School of Design, and later, at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

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