Klaus Ottmann, Phillips Collection Curator-at-Large, writes about Rackstraw Downes plein-air painting process on the occasion of the exhibition Rackstraw Downes: Onsite Paintings, 1972-2008.

Ottman writes "One of the rare artists to have carried [plein-art painting] into the twenty-first century, is the English-born, Yale-educated painter Rackstraw Downes. Dividing his time between New York and Texas, Downes has been painting exterior and interior panoramic scenes of the American land- and urbanscape from life in Maine, New York, New Jersey, Texas, and elsewhere en plein air for over thirty-five years."