PORTLAND, ME.- This winter, the Portland Museum of Art will feature the first major survey of paintings by contemporary artist Rackstraw Downes. Rackstraw Downes: Onsite Paintings, 1972-2008, on view December 16, 2010 through March 20, 2011, will feature more than 30 major works ranging from Downes’ earliest en plein air paintings executed in Maine to his later signature views of the New York City skyline and the vast panoramas near his home in Presidio, Texas. Organized by the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, New York, the exhibition will feature Downes’ minutely detailed paintings, some of them multiple-part canvases, of exterior and interior panoramic scenes of the American land-and urbanscape from 1972 to 2008. The exhibition will trace the artist’s career through major examples of his work painted in Maine, Texas, New Jersey, and New York, including two haunting depictions of the untenanted interior