Rackstraw Downes: Drawing as part of the process

April 29 - June 12
opens Thursday, April 29

Rackstraw Downes Facing South, the Gauge Shelter, (1999)
Graphite on cream paper, 9-3/8 x 16 inches, DDW 417

Rackstraw Downes, the internationally renowned realist painter, is particularly celebrated for his work within the tradition of panoramic landscape. Clarity and obstinate fidelity to the observed world, awareness of the social dimension, and a refusal to accept short cuts such as the convention of single-point perspective, lend intensity, freshness, and richness to his disarmingly empirical, but unforgettable images. A sense of place-of human presence, or absence-is a defining characteristic of his work.

The Studio School exhibition concentrates exclusively on works on paper to reveal, through 58 drawings, the way the artist finds his painting images through series of closely related drawings made in situ. The show covers seven motifs from the period 1998 to 2002, including water-flow monitoring installations on the Rio Grande, Texas; the golf cage at Chelsea Piers; a water-main construction project on New York's Canal Street; and a music hall at Snug Harbor on Staten Island.

click here to view images in the exhibition

Gallery open every day, 10 am to 6 pm
Admission Free

Please contact the gallery director with any questions about the exhibition program