Off The Wall Magazine Q&A with Ed Wintner
4/1/2019
Maine. My grandmother and her five sisters all grew up summering in Maine at a family cottage on Sagadahoc Bay, Georgetown and I can remember making that trip from my earliest years. Our family is now quite large, and several more cottages have been added to this special Point, and I now make the trek with my kids.
Inspiration. Rocky headlands, long tides over the flats, silhouetted trees on the shore, and beautiful light that are so special to the Maine coast and they inspire me daily. My love of color, the interplay of silhouettes and negative space, and the desire to create a "landscape moment" that the viewer can step into.
Medium. I work in acrylics - this was an obvious choice as soon as I developed my style of painting, which relies upon many layers with crisp borders. I don't paint any lines in my work; all of the lines have to be defined by the clear intersection of one color next to another. This style is well suited to a medium that dries relatively quickly so that the next layer can move forward without blending into the previous layers.
Artist Hero. I am fascinated by the way that older Japanese prints create depth with flat colors, for instance, Hokusai. Western artists, particularly French poster painters of the 1920s, adapted such styles in much the same way that I do to New England landscapes.
Fun Fact. For the first half of my life I was a chemist in biotech drug discovery and hold numerous US patents.
Study. While in high school in Philadelphia, I studied painting at the Philadelphia College of Art on weekends. I continued with drawing and painting courses while at Yale majoring in chemistry. I have a PHD in Organic Chemistry from MIT.
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