JERRY WAYNE DOWNS 

In the Library: "Locomotion No. 3—Teepee in the Highway"—Lithograph. (2d floor, south of reference area)

Downs says of this work: "The irresistible force meets the immovable object. The object gives. The road is civilization, straight, delineated slicing through everything in its path, a non-seeing system, made of nature but believing it is operating of its own accord. The tipi moves with slow deliberateness through the field. It is inevitable change, twigs of nature’s land wrapped in skins of its own creations, growth, rebirth, and it plows like the Flying Dutchman through the road as if it were not there."

Downs continues the art of the great surrealists. Like them, he rips through the veil of conventionality and brings to a contemporary audience a fresh perception of the nature of reality. With artistic alchemy, Downs fashions surreal worlds populated with unlikely companions – eggs and half-buried cars in Landscape with Xenophobic Remains, an elegant theater staircase that leads to a gossamer unknown in Staircase, a highway so jam-packed that rapid-paced vehicles are rendered immobile in No Exit, or, as depicted in Matinee, a movie theater in a romantic forest becomes a forest in a romantic movie theater.

Downs deliberately calibrates these seemingly out-of-joint and juxtaposed relationships with enough sleight-of-hand and sorcery to excite the viewer into rethinking the meaning of art and the artist’s message each time the work is encountered.

Downs’ subject matter is engaging for yet another reason – his superb mastery of the painter’s craft. The artist articulates his dreamlike landscapes with perfect brushstrokes, exquisite colors, and flawless rendering, tantalizing the viewer to enter each canvas and partake of the surreal delights within.

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