Terry Winters was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1949. He has a keen interest in science and scientific breakthroughs and is knowledgeable about computer simulations, genetic mapping, and electronic microscopes. Winters’ enthusiasm for science manifests itself in his art, as he often finds inspiration for his paintings in the biological forms found in nature. He has researched the sources of ancient pigments used to create color in paints and dyes, and he has even ground pigments to make his own paints. In effect, he has stretched the creative act to include making the very materials with which his art is created. Winters spent ten years focused almost solely on developing his approach to painting, postponing any exhibiting of his artwork until he had worked out his own relationship to the creative task.

“I’m interested in how to give a picture of these things we can’t see,” says Winters. Rhyme has endless possibilities for interpretations, as Winters’ paintings draw from a variety of sources at once. His early sketches of plant parts—like pods, spores, and stamens—that he found in natural history museums and books became the starting point for the subject matter of his paintings. Images of hot air balloons, soccer balls, sponges, and soap bubbles fill his sketch books and lend qualities to the forms he creates. Yet despite the real-world origin of his imagery, Winters doesn’t aim to represent specific processes or structures through his paintings. Ideas that are rooted in biology and chemistry take on a life of their own when they reach the canvas.

Winters is also interested in the forces of the natural world that fall outside human perception. At any given moment there are several—perhaps innumerable—forces at work that extend beyond the realm of what we can perceive. We cannot hear sounds that fall outside a certain range, see light at certain wavelengths, or distinguish molecular interactions with the naked eye, yet we experience the effects of these interactions and conditions. These indefinable, imperceptible, but nonetheless existing occurrences are the kinds of things Winters tries to depict in his paintings.