Art Brokerage: Jerry Wayne Downs continues the art of the great surrealists. Like them, he rips through the veil of conventionality and brings to a contemporary audience a fresh perception of the nature of reality With artistic alchemy, Downs fashions surreal worlds populated with unlikely companions, like eggs and half-buried cars in Landscape with Xenophobic Remains; an elegant theater staircase that leads to a gossamer. A highway so jam-packed that rapid-paced vehicles are rendered immobile in No Exit, or a movie theater in a romantic forest becomes a forest in a romantic movie theater. Downs deliberately calibrates these seemingly out-of-joint and juxtaposed relationships with enough sleight-of-hand and sorcery to excite the viewer into re-thinking the meaning of art and the artist’s message each time the work is encountered. Downs’ subject matter is engaging for yet another reason his superb mastery of the painter’s craft. The artist articulates his dreamlike landscapes with perfect brushstrokes, exquisite colors, and flawless rendering, tantalizing the viewer to enter each canvas and partake of the surreal delights within.