In this video short, Rackstraw Downes discusses looking at old master paintings by Jacob van Ruysdael, J.M.W. Turner, John Constable, and Claude Lorrain.

Downes comments: "I don't have any sentimentality about those painters, I don't think. It's that they would seem useful to me and provocative to me. They were like challenges to me – can you do this that well? So I can't access those painters technically, but I can acces them through various things that their paintings do."

New paintings by Rackstraw Downes are on view at Betty Cuningham Gallery, New York, through November 24, 2012.