Exposition Joe DOWNING

Maison de la Truffe et du Vin

French-American painter, Joe Downing, born 1925 in Tomkinsville, Kentucky U.S.A. he studied at the Chigago Art Institute. Sensitive to beauty, at an early age, influenced by the lovely landscapes of Kentucky, helped to constitute his universe, along with art and history and the nomad lifestyle of the Native American Indians.

His first art exhibition in 1950 was in a baptist church in Chicago. As the years went by, he assembled on his canvas an incredible jigsaw in which there was no holding back in the explosion of colours.  Attracted to unusual surfaces, he paints on old doors, windows, and then leather...

He creates his very own magical universe, inviting and sharing it with us, far away from the banality of everyday life. With the eyes of a child, we are transported and dazzled by the richness this silence reveals.

He identifies better with ancient art more so than his contemporary, touched by Braque, Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec and Vuillard. Italian painting along with egyptian art inspires him.

For more than thirty-five years, he lives and works in Menerbes, an area to which he is at ease "this is home".

His work exhibited in several museums through out the U.S.A, France, Belgium, Israel, Luxemburg, Canada, Australia... The Jerry E. Baker Foundation is building a museum in Kentucky.

"In Menerbes, at the far end of my studio is a bare rock, my easel is pose between three windows. I can see the titles of a roof, spotted with grey and yellow lichen, attentive to the sun like dinosaur eggs. Together, one after the other, a climbing rose, a passionflower, a wisteria, climbing flower shrubs, buds exhaling the air with perfume, absorbing and projecting sun and moonlight. In the backgroud, the undulating lines of the Luberon Mountains block the sky. The sky, the mountains, three hundred year old locust trees, wild gardens; a window, an easel, a canvas, paintbrushes. Here, daily, with complete peace of mind, painting progress, mingled like vines, the flowers, the houses, the streets separated yet united. There is a subdued silence, the bristle of a paintbrush on a linen canvas. Outside, in the heat the weed grows, flower seeds fall. A dog barks..."

Joe Downing

"Joe, I am completely enthusiasm by your paintings, they make me want to nominate and give them names. They are the joy of freedom, fresh yet at the same time, they are an immeasurable violence in an oceanic of freedom. Behind this explosion of colour, I see a motionless forest, trees, smooth, naked, whistling. The wind blows inviding the earth then passes by encircling the trees leaving them covered with sea spray. 

The trees sparkle, drowning in tears of joy..."