Like many artists, Joseph (Joe) Dudley Downing discovered art almost by accident. Despite his rural upbringing, he joined the cosmopolitan world of mid-twentieth century Paris and produced a diverse body of abstract work.
Downing was born in Tompkinsville, Kentucky, but as a child moved fifty miles away to a tobacco farm near Horse Cave. He attended local schools and was the valedictorian of his high school class. At age eighteen, in 1943, he enlisted in the United States Army and served in a unit that landed in Normandy soon after D-day. For his service he was awarded a Bronze Star. Returning to the United States, he was a student for part of the 1945/1946 academic year at Western Kentucky University where he took his first art class. Acceding to the wishes of his parents, he moved to Chicago to study at the Northern Illinois College of Optometry.
A turning point came for Downing after a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago. He recounted: “So, I had this second awakening, or maybe first awakening, because when I discovered painting it was as if I’d been half asleep all my life. And as I said I felt that it was if we’d had this meeting planned forever. And very quickly I became a painter who was studying optometry and not an optometry student who painted.” Discovering that the institute offered classes, Downing studied there for five years, while also pursuing a degree in optometry. After graduation in that specialty, he passed the state board examinations in West Virginia, but before settling down he used a war bond of three hundred dollars to return abroad. Thereafter he was an expatriate supporting himself in a secretarial role during the day and making art in a local gallery in the evenings.
Downing resided at times in Ménerbes, a small village in Provence, while maintaining an apartment and studio in Paris where the dominant artistic force was the “New School of Paris” or École de Paris III. This European movement was characterized by gestural brushwork and tactile surfaces, and it was described as more lyrical than its counterpart, American Abstract Expressionism. Downing worked in this vein, often creating canvases encrusted with pigment, but he also experimented with non-traditional materials such as roof tiles, barn doors, and even animal bones.
Jerry Baker, an avid collector of Downing’s work, decided to establish a museum to honor Downing in his home state. The project began as a collaboration between Downing and Baker in 1995, and the project was completed in 2008, a year after Downing’s death. The Downing Museum was thereafter the “crown jewel” of Baker Arboretum.