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Rackstraw Downes is a British-born realist painter. His work is notable for its meticulous detail (accumulating in months of regular plein-air sessions), its socially provocative narratives (candidly depicting human industry's engagement with the environment) and for its compositional rigor (balancing structural abstraction and perspectival extension). He has written for The New York Times, Art in America, Art News, and The New Criterion, and other publications. He also edited Art In Its Own Terms: Selected Criticism, 1935-1975, a collection of Fairfield Porter's writing. Downes' writing has been published in two small paperbacks: In Relation to the Whole, which features three essays; Under The Gowanus and Razor-Wire Journal, a documentation of his painting process; and in his own monograph, Rackstraw Downes.

He holds a BA in literature from Cambridge University, as well as a BFA and MFA from Yale University. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998. In 1999 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Though he is primarily based in New York City, Downes has also created a significant amount of work on site in Maine and Texas, including the Donald Judd structures in Marfa, TX. He is represented by the Betty Cuningham Gallery (http://www.bettycuninghamgallery.com) in New York.

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

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