Rackstraw Downes is interested in the concept of the wandering eye, how we see things in individual parts instead of as a whole. In a way, Downes captures this concept in the pieces he creates.
Downes mostly works with paint to make his large, panoramic pieces.
Landscape paintings make up the majority of his works. Downes depicts what's around him until he grows bored and finds another location that interests him. He paints multiple pieces of the same area, but at different times and in different positions. This makes it so that even though he has several paintings of the same location, each painting differs due to the unique conditions in which they were executed.
When painting these landscapes, Downes pays no heed to the rules of perspective and instead just paints what he sees. This makes some of his lines more curvilinear than lines an artist who follows the rules of perspective would paint. However, this difference is not due to amateurish techniques, but because of how our eyes naturally see. Through his panoramic pieces, Downes is able to transport viewers to the locations he's painted as they view his works not as a whole, but in equally important parts.
Information provided by:
"Rackstraw Downes." Art21. PBS, n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2014.
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