 Over the next several years he taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Parsons School of Design, and later, at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.Though he is primarily based in New York City, where he has painted numerous cityscapes and urban scenes such as his series of four paintings, entitled "Four Spots Along a Razor-Wire Fence", Downes has traveled widely, creating a significant number of landscape paintings on site in Maine and Texas, of subjects including the harbor of Portland, Maine and the Donald Judd structures in Marfa, Texas.He has also painted interiors of a panoramic scale similar to his landscapes.