Terry Winters #3

Terry Winters's studio, designed by MOS Architects, overlooks the Taconic Mountains. The architectural plan nods to the form of the Native American longhouse and the industrial, prefab Quonset hut.


The lofty, curved ceiling of Mr. Winters’s studio has no skylights. Instead, large glass sliding doors at the north and south ends admit plentiful light and views of the landscape.


Terry Winters uses the studio at the south end of the building largely for making his smaller-scaled works on paper, or when he wants a change of location or different light when working on his paintings.


A gray cube in the center of the studio houses amenities and divides the 130 x 45 foot space into different zones, including a kitchen.


A small study housed in the center of the studio houses a collection of objects from Mr. Winters’s travels including a Hopi Kachina mask from New Mexico and a Diane Arbus photograph.


Paints organized into color groups in Mr. Winters’s studio. The particular light, atmosphere, and changing weather here adds another dimension to his use of oil paint, he says.


Terry Winters’s painting tools in his Columbia County, N.Y., studio.


Artist Terry Winters sits in his sunlit studio amid some of his most recent works, which he says have been influenced by his relocation to a more natural setting in Columbia County, NY, from the city.

"Artist Terry Winters decided he needed a new kind of studio about 13 years ago, one that would function as another creative tool in his arsenal, he says.

The artist, whose large-scale paintings and smaller works on paper are distinguished by abstracted natural forms such as crystals, shells, molecules and cell structures, had always worked in classic loft buildings in the heart of lower Manhattan.

He didn’t want to fix up another city building this time. “I’ve done that quite a bit,” he says. Despite being a lifelong New Yorker, the idea of moving his work closer to the natural world his paintings evoke began to appeal to him.

So in 2002, Mr. Winters and his wife, Hendel Teicher, an art historian and curator, purchased a 47-acre parcel in Columbia County, about 110 miles north of New York City. They began living part-time in the small house on the property. Mr. Winters purchased a stainless steel Quonset hut online to use as a summer studio.

It was only after four years of living there and becoming familiar with the landscape, light and topography that Mr. Winters and Ms. Teicher felt ready to build. They teamed up with MOS Architects, the Manhattan firm known for its research-based approach to design and Rick McCue, a local builder.

“I like to think that we formed a triangulation that took advantage of everyone’s best qualities,” Mr. Winters says.

The resulting space, completed in 2007, is larger than anything he worked in before–about 130 by 42 feet, with a soaring ceiling. At every point, the goal was to integrate the building and the surrounding landscape, he says.

The studio’s asymmetrical roofline, angled porches and facades are wrapped in an uninterrupted skin of zinc panels. The mineral color, weather-beaten patina and matte quality of the zinc mesh with the natural slate outcroppings that mark the site.

Inside, a free-standing cube housing a small library, kitchen and other amenities divides the open space into two studios. In the bigger one, Mr. Winters works on large paintings; in the smaller, he focuses mostly on paper.

Mr. Winters and his design team decided against skylights to preserve the continuous curve of the ceiling. Instead, immense glass sliding doors provide ample illumination.

The brightness and panoramic views of the Taconic Mountains have had an effect on Mr. Winters’s artwork, he says. In his recent large paintings, he sees something new emerging.

The space of the studio, its view onto the landscape and its plentiful light are “getting fed into the pictures now,” he says. “It’s more about the atmospherics here, and understanding the correlation between the real-world atmosphere and the optics of oil paint.” (bron: The WallStreet Journal, foto's: Richard Beaven, tekst: Aruna D’Souza)


Terry Winters on Painting.