On site: major paintings by Rackstraw Downes and Stanley Lewis
By Alfred Mac Adam
In a bygone era of college football, Doc Blanchard “Mr. Inside”, and Glenn Davis “Mr. Outside” made headlines for the West Point Military Academy team that won multiple championships through his play on the court, passing the ball inside and carrying it outside. They have now been replaced by a few landscape painters: Stanley Lewis on the interior and Rackstraw Downes on the exterior. Both are outdoor artists; together they take the landscape tradition in a new direction. Unlike the Hudson River School painters, they did not depict a pristine New World landscape, nor did they follow Corot’s example, creating beautifully rendered but imaginary places. They do not seek the picturesque and do not strive to subject wild nature to artistic will. These two find places – or perhaps the places find them – in a nature overtaken by human beings, devoid of picturesque and which no one, of course, will ever describe as virginal.
