By Paul Turner
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Despite that horrifying first day (“I never really got over it”), Downs kept the job. His press card read “artist/reporter” and he drew for every section: front page, sports, food–he was even sent as far away as Australia for the travel section. He also covered the courts, witnessing every major trial in town. When the Daily News folded, in 1978, he continued on at the Sun-Times.
“I loved to paint, but I knew that to make a living you had to be able to do the commercial stuff.” His last year, “we were told that we gotta start getting into this more modernistic painting and stuff….I was concerned about getting into the field and this wasn’t going to help.” Downs voiced his frustrations about the lack of balance in the curriculum to various faculty members. His favorite teacher, LeRoy Neiman, told him not to worry about it, but he was told by some higher-ups, who felt that he wasn’t being very grateful about his scholarship, to keep his trap shut.
Downs had enough free time to work as an artist in his own right: he painted, taught classes, had shows. He rented a studio in a historic district of San Antonio next to one owned by Mount Rushmore artist Gutzon Borglum, and married a local woman of Mexican heritage. The army condoned his extracurricular activities. They “thought it was good PR and was good for relations with civilians and basically left me alone. It’s amazing. My time in the army flew by.”
Downs retired from the Sun-Times in 1994, consigning his newspaper sketches to basement storage. Divorced, his three children grown, he’s thrown himself into painting, the sort of fine art he rebelled against as a student. His small Rogers Park condo overlooking the lake is cluttered with paint, chalk, canvas, and brushes, along with work both finished and in progress. “I work every day, sometimes I get up in the middle of the night and start drawing.”
