Thinking, mapping, painting: over the last decade, Terry Winters has increasingly sought to translate systems of information—and the ways we think about them—into pictorial space

Art in America, April, 2005 by Carol Diehl

"There's nothing to do with painting," Winters says, "except use it as a place of conjecture." He describes his own images simply as "abstract pictures of the world," but they can further be construed as maps of consciousness, charting human responses to an environment that increasingly requires the separation of instinct from intellect, where we're confronted with such a barrage of information that we don't even have time to process it. This visceral application of handmade marks to often technical subject matter has the effect of synthesizing otherwise contradictory aspects into a single statement: one that is simultaneously primitive and sophisticated, emotional and analytical, natural and technological, physical and intellectual--an emblem of our time that propels us into the future.

(1.) Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are drawn from conversation with the artist.

(2.) Quoted in Peter Eleey, The Brooklyn Rail, October-November 2001, p. 12.

"Terry Winters: Paintings, Drawings, Prints, 1994-2004" appeared at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass. [Sept. 18, 2004-Jan. 2, 2005], before traveling to the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego [Jan. 23-Apr. 17]. Later this month it moves to the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston [Apr. 30-July 10].

Author: Carol Diehl is an artist who also writes about art.