Brooklyn-born Terry Winters is an uncommon and rare kind of artist. Deeply concerned with the process and philosophy of making art, he had been painting for 10 years before he showed his work in public. Born in 1949, US born-Winters studied at his local art school, the Pratt Institute, graduating with a BA in Fine Arts in 1971. During his early years of creating, he explored many aspects of the art-making process. Not content merely to paint, he delved deeply into how to create his own pigments, including biology and minerology study. Natural sciences heavily influenced his work. At this time, he was living in New Mexico, the landscape of which had a profound effect on him.
Terry Winters has also explored philosophical considerations around art, including whether painting is essentially an illusionist art and can never be truly representational. His philosophy and highly nuanced painting method was on display at his first exhibition in 1982 at the Sonnabend Gallery in NYC. As well as creating work as a painter, he also explored printmaking and draftsmanship. Later works include ‘Dumb Compass’ from 1985, ‘Tone’ from 1989.
Terry Winters produced many prints, his first prints being created in the 1960s. Many of Terry Winters’s prints were lithograph prints though he also created etching prints, woodcut prints and drypoint prints. All of Terry Winters prints are original prints as Winters saw printmaking as a distinct medium to create artworks.