Unexpected elements

Artist Dennis Downey

How is painting a landscape like pulling a tooth? Dennis Downey, who practiced dentistry in Santa Fe for 30 years before becoming a full-time painter, certainly seems like a good person to ask. Downey is no stranger to the art scene here — his first studio occupied the current Rail Runner train station in downtown Santa Fe. When he recently donated a large painting for permanent display at the train station, Mayor Javier Gonzales designated Oct. 12 as “Dennis Downey Day” in his honor. Downey’s new exhibition, The Corazón

de Santa Fe, is the artist’s first solo show in roughly a decade. The cohesive presentation of oil paintings, taken altogether, demonstrates a classical treatment of material and subject matter. The exhibition, which is up through Nov. 30, occupies the surprisingly roomy gallery space at Justin’s Frame Design in the Baca Railyard district.

But how exactly does one go from examining teeth to plein-air painting? For Downey, the transition was a long time coming. Born in St. Louis in 1941, Downey identified as an artist from a young age, earning a scholarship to study art at UCLA upon graduating high school. Both Downey’s father and grandfather were physicians, however, and when it was time for college, Downey recalled, “I was told, ‘You need to decide what kind of doctor you want to be, and then you can go do your painting.’ ” So Downey studied dentistry, setting up a practice in Santa Fe in the early 1970s.

“In the dentist chair, I sat at the knee of some of the best artists in the country,” Downey said. One of his first patients was landscape painter Eric Sloane, who encouraged Downey to paint, and with whom he later studied. Other patients-turned-mentors included Robert Lougheed, Tom Lovell, and Wayne Wolfe. “Long ago, Wayne invited me to go on a painting trip to Yellowstone,” Downey recalled. “So he picked me up early and had an older gentleman with him. He said, ‘You don’t mind if my friend John comes with us, do you?’ ” Wolfe’s friend was none other than renowned Western painter John Clymer, who, along with classical landscape painters William Turner and John Constable, is among Downey’s favorite artists.

Downey ran a successful fine art gallery on Canyon Road for 25 years before closing in 2011. He said, “The art market and how galleries do business have changed a lot, which I think has to do with the internet. The days of people walking into a gallery and saying, ‘I like it, I’ll buy it!’ — well, those days were wonderful, but those days are rare now.” Despite expressing fondness for Canyon Road, which he calls “a secret garden of art,” Downey likes the idea of showing work in a new, somewhat unorthodox venue — a fine art framing shop. Justin’s has been in business for decades, having moved to its current location in the Baca Street Art District seven years ago. It’s an area with ties to the past, anchored on one end by Fairview Cemetery. But it’s also home to newer commercial and residential buildings, with more construction currently underway. Owner Justin Sachs said he’s in the best possible place not only to sell picture frames, but also the artwork inside them: “I love being in this area,” he said. “It’s exciting to have a gallery space, too. It’s only a year or so old, and ideally I’d like to host art shows every quarter.”

More than anything, Downey considers himself a colorist, a designation that is conveyed in a number of the works on display. The soft, blurred-leaf treetops in the diptych October Winds are rendered in sizzling crimson and deep gold, rich hues that are tempered by the artist’s deliberate brushwork. Downey’s whispery soft leaves and grasses are akin to those of Wolf Kahn. Downey’s love of color is less moderated in works like Texas Spring, where a sea of swirled-together azure flowers swallows up the vertical canvas, drowning out trees and upstaging distant buildings in a way that muddles and ultimately overwhelms the composition. In many works, however, Downey’s stated preoccupation with color comes to swoon-worthy realization. The snowy, darkening evening depicted in High Road Wedding is the perfect foil for the painting’s central church, whose blazing, brazenly red roof seems to stand in defiance against the murky dusk. A colorful procession of small figures appear just outside the church, warmed by its glow and perhaps united against the quickening evening.

Downey approaches abstraction in Summer Storm, one of the exhibition’s larger works. Billowy cream-colored clouds are broken apart by a gauzy wash of pale light. Yellow grasses in the painting’s

“Painting outside is so important in terms of making sure you get the color exactly right. I want the viewer to feel what I felt; I want to knock you off your feet.”

foreground seem to take on the negative-ion effect that follows a long rain, wherein even the most familiar details of the outdoors — a fencepost, a tree branch — are fleetingly elevated and magnified by light that is almost painful in its crispness. For Sachs, Downey’s ability to capture light in all of its shifting, ineffable moods is what first interested him in the artist. “I’ve always been impressed by his Western paintings, because he’s so good at capturing the light here,” Sachs said. “As a photographer, I’m in awe of anyone who can convey that kind of light using paint.”

Taos Pueblo, a straight-on view of the many towered, golden-brown adobe settlement, evinces a keen elegance. Nestled against green hills, with a sky above of roiling, multi-hued clouds, the pueblo’s rectangular windows and kiva ladders are lit by a radiance that seems reverential; the pueblo occurs as a distinct, regal entity that is both independent and majestically part of its surroundings. For Downey, painting is a full-time job; he sets up an easel seven days a week. “Maybe two out of ten paintings I make will be great,” he said, “but painting outside is so important in terms of making sure you get the color exactly right. I want the viewer to feel what I felt; I want to knock you off your feet.”

The influence of Downey’s early mentors manifests itself in his classical subject matter, but his canvases also contain wholly unexpected elements. In Evening Light, a piñon-dotted field is interrupted by a jagged smudge of brilliant yellow and orange. Is it a fire? Why does it hover above the field below it? Nearby clouds are edged with wild orange, lit up by the mysterious burst of flaming, sourceless light. The towering clouds in Lander Pass are split in half by a slim vertical rainbow, a spellbinding, improbable addition that our eyes, if not our minds, accept as somehow logical. A jaunty procession of covered wagons meanders across the bottom of the canvas, an ingenious compositional anchor that figuratively and literally brings viewers back down to earth.

Though he started painting in 1976, Downey practiced dentistry until 2000. It’s is a job he said he very much enjoyed. So, which is harder: Pulling teeth or pulling off a great painting? Downey hesitated only a moment before answering. “Pulling teeth is harder. I liked dentistry, but I think I’ve forgotten how to do it. My true calling is painting.”

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Dennis Downey: The Corazón de Santa Fe; through Nov. 30 Justin’s Frame Designs, 1221 Flagman Way, 505-955-1911