Terry Winters

Overview

I don’t want to explain myself or blow things out of proportion, but there are connections and subjects. It’s not abstract to me. The paintings are very specific and emotionally driven.

Terry Winters' work shows faith in the language of painting to imagine worlds otherwise impossible to envisage. He works at the intersection between abstraction and ecologically inspired representation.

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Biography

Terry Winters in New York City, 2001. Photo by Sally Larson

My approach was structural. I was intrigued by forms that looked “real,” but were difficult to identify or whose identity was linked directly to their structure: crystals, shells, honeycombs. There was an architecture to the “morula” forms, in terms of the cell development.

Terry Winters was born in 1949 in Brooklyn, USA. He obtained his B.F.A. at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, in 1971. Initially, Winters created works based on botanical imagery such as seeds, cells, and spores; later he became inspired by biological processes and scientific and mathematical theories. His art is highly process-driven and speaks to the interaction between technology and the human mind. Though symbolic, his images are consistent with the Modernist legacy of physicality and non-narrative abstraction. Though best known for his paintings, Winter's is also an accomplished draughtsman and printmaker, often with a complex interchange between the three media.

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