Mother Father

David Downs’ "Mother Father" is a touching work with universal resonance and mysterious shrouded beauty. Deeply personal and heartfelt, the painting captures and commemorates the artist's parents before their separation and his birth. Downs paints it from a memory he does not have, or, more precisely, he creates a memory. He has no recollection of his parents being together and the work acts as a monument to an idealized past and a fantasy of a childhood he never had. "Mother Father" is relatable and evocative to so many of us who grew up in divorced and divided homes. We yearn for the unity we never experienced and the shadows of it emerge from our minds and peer through clouds of time and circumstance, just like Downs’ parents partially emerge from the red haze.