Portrait of an Artist as a Neighbor

Downing stayed close to family

By GINA KINSLOW

Quiet, softspoken, genuine, loving, kind, unique and talented are just some of the adjectives Joe Dudley Downing’s friends and family have used over the last couple of days to describe him.

Downing, a renowned artist, died Dec. 29 at age 82 in Menerbes, France, but his memory lives on in the stories friends and family members will share for many years to come.

“This is very sad for all of us,” said his niece, Anne Patterson, of Glasgow.

All of his nieces and nephews had a close, personal relationship with him.

“He was the one that just brought joy to everyone. When you met him, you felt like you had known him forever. He always had time for everyone and was such a genuine person,” Anne Patterson said. “He always acted like he had time to spend with each one of us.”

Downing didn’t make it home too often from France, where he had lived for the past 50 years. Patterson’s husband, Ray, said in the 30 years he had known the artist he had probably come home five or six times.

Horse Cave, a tiny town with one traffic light in south central Kentucky, was “home.”

He grew up there until he was 18, when he left for service in the United States Army during World War II. It was during his military tour that he caught his first glimpse of Paris.

After the war, Downing returned to the States and enrolled at Western Kentucky University for a portion of the 1945-46 school year, which was when he began to take interest in art. His parents, however, wanted him to pursue a career as an optometrist, so he enrolled in the Northern Illinois College of Optometry in Chicago. At the same time, he took classes at the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 1950, he returned to Paris, but he was only planning to stay for three months. As it turned out, he decided to make France his home.

“He wanted to go back and see it and once he got over there, he liked it and decided to pursue art rather than fitting glasses,” Ray Patterson said. “He wrote his brother a letter to tell his mom and dad, ‘I’m not coming back.’ That was 50 years ago.”

Downing never continued with his career in optometry, but pursued his creative vision as an artist.

Ray Patterson described Downing’s art style as being “experimental abstract.”

“His style always stayed the same except for his experimentation with different materials,” he said.

Downing didn’t always paint on canvas. He painted on animal bones, leather, terra cotta roof tiles, wood and other materials.

Downing recently painted a fiddle for the Bowling Green Orchestra, but his work can be found worldwide.

“He has a painting in the Louvre, which is a very rare thing due to the fact he is American,” Ray Patterson said.

His work can also be found at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, the Smithsonian Institute and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as well as the Kentucky Museum in Bowling Green, the Speed Museum in Louisville and the Owensboro Museum of Fine Art.

Downing maintained an apartment and studio in Paris the entire time he lived there. He also had a house in the tiny village of Menerbes in the south of France.

The Pattersons visited him in 2000. Menerbes, being so small and in such a rural area, was difficult to find.

“We got a little lost,” Anne Patterson said. So they stopped to ask for directions. “We would say, ‘Do you know Joe Downing?’ and they would say, ‘Oh, yes.’”

They finally found him. He was standing in the street in front of his house talking to friends when they drove up.

While Downing had no children of his own, he treated his many nieces and nephews as his children.

“He said, ‘Here are my children,’” Anne Patterson said. “It was just a celebration that was wonderful for all of us. It was just like had been waiting forever for us to arrive.”

Her cousin, Joe Burton Downing, also of Glasgow, was close to the artist, as well.

“He was Joe Downing in the art world and I was Joe Downing here. We had a little bit of a special relationship because of that,” Joe Burton Downing said.

He went to see Downing once in France in 1972.

“He cooked Trite,” Joe Burton Downing said.

The younger Downing did not know what Trite was until after his uncle told him it was stomach.

Even though Downing lived far away from his family, he always made them special whenever they could visit him.

“Uncle Dud had a way of making you know how important family was to him and how important you were to him,” Joe Burton Downing said. “You knew you were always in his heart.”

Joe Dudley Downing’s brother, George, was the last to talk to him before his death. George Downing told family members that Downing had commented that he had no regrets and loved every moment of his life, but he had remorse because he didn’t get to see his family very often.

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