PLEIN AIR ARTISTS
An Online Artist's Coop for Artists who Paint on Location
Plein air artist wins McArthur Fellowship
Rackstraw Downes, born in England, but living in the US since the sixties has won a McArthur fellowship. The so called genius grant. This is a huge surprise since the award for art usually goes to an avant garde artist, nowadays called cutting edge which is code for non traditional art.
Rackstraw paints everything on site. Sometimes he spends months on one painting. The work is not escapist but suggests mans very complicated relationship with nature and is extremely contemplative. His work is not splashy or gratuitous, but very closely observed. His use of perspective is as one sees rather than renaissance linear perspective so the horizon often bends as the eye moves across the space. Verticals are not always vertical, but tilt as the eye actually perceives them in space.
I strongly suggest all on site painters give his work careful review.
Google McArthur Foundation and look under fellows. follow the threads to various websites.
Rackstraw paints everything on site. Sometimes he spends months on one painting. The work is not escapist but suggests mans very complicated relationship with nature and is extremely contemplative. His work is not splashy or gratuitous, but very closely observed. His use of perspective is as one sees rather than renaissance linear perspective so the horizon often bends as the eye moves across the space. Verticals are not always vertical, but tilt as the eye actually perceives them in space.
I strongly suggest all on site painters give his work careful review.
Google McArthur Foundation and look under fellows. follow the threads to various websites.
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