NEW YORK, NY.- “Paint what you see! Paint what you see!” so exclaims Stanley Lewis to a group visiting his retrospective at American University in 2007, describing the mammoth challenge that he faces daily in his own work. Meanwhile Rackstraw Downes traverses the country conscious of season, light, ditches and power lines to find a site that satisfies “some inner need”.

Betty Cuningham Gallery is now conducting a two-person show featuring major paintings by Rackstraw Downes and Stanley Lewis. Both Downes and Lewis are on-site painters. Both fight for ‘honest’ observation, with a shared interest in the particular and the mundane. However, they differ greatly by method, by subject, by need, and even sometimes by humor. While Rackstraw will travel miles to sites which intrigue him, Stanley stays put and paints where he is. In a 2006 gallery video Rackstraw speaks about his frustration to do it right: “Do it again, Downes, and get it right this time, the way it REALLY is!! And I love that!”

In a letter to the gallery Stanley writes about trying to get it right: “To do my BEST means I go very slowly and try to get everything as good as I can before I move on – I always have to redo everything almost 100 times. Very Slow process. After my eyes warm up, I see every blade of grass.”

Both share the need for adjustment and change. Downes will often find the need to extend his canvas, to include a more than 180º view, splicing on sections on left or right, top or bottom. Lewis on the other hand self-corrects, piling paper over paper, incorporating tears and sometimes staples or nails all towards getting it right. Downes’ canvases surround the viewer demanding a virtual visit to the location, and often exposing an environmental/political message. On the other hand, Lewis’ thickly worked, bas-relief canvases physically share the viewer’s space and open a complex experience of discovery.

A juxtaposition of these two painters, who work to capture the truth of their subjects, opens-up the question of personal observation and objectivity: Painting and building on each moment in time through their personally constructed windows.

“Paint what you SEE!”

“Do it again! And get it RIGHT this time!”

Stanley Lewis was born in Somerville, NJ in 1941. He received a BA from Wesleyan University in 1963 and an MFA from Yale University in 1967 as a Danforth Fellow. Throughout his career, Lewis has held posts as teacher and critic at various institutions including Kansas City Art Institute, Smith College, and American University. In 2005, Lewis received a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 2015 he received an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work can be found in numerous public collections including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; National Academy Museum, New York, NY; Hollins University Gallery, Roanoke, VA; William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation, Mt. Kisco, NY; the Collections of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY; and the Watkins Collection at American University, Washington, DC, among others. In 2007, the Katzen Art Center at American University, Washington, DC hosted a retrospective of the artist’s work. Lewis lives and works in Leeds, MA.

Rackstraw Downes, born in England in 1939, received his BA from University of Cambridge in 1961 and his BFA and MFA from Yale University in 1963 and 1964 respectively. He remained in the United States, becoming a citizen in 1980. He is the recipient of the Guggenheim (1998) and MacArthur (2009) Fellowships, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1999). A retrospective, Rackstraw Downes: Onsite Paintings, 1972-2008, was organized by the Parrish Art Museum in 2010. It traveled to the Portland Museum of Art, ME, and the Weatherspoon Museum in Greensboro, NC. His work is in the collections of several museums including The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art.

This exhibition is accompanied by an online viewing room and will be open to the public through Friday, July 28, 2023.