At the end of my senior year professors Muirhead and Bumbeck, dubious of the amount of time and effort I'd been putting into my Art major, presented me with an unofficial "Asleep at the Switch" award (which went unacknowledged at Commencement).  Begging your pardon professors, but I'm a delicate flower and I had to conserve my energy: my paintings weren't just going to paint themselves over the next fifty years!

A couple of years after I graduated I did a painting based on an old black and white snapshot and the result was revelatory to me -------- these visual shards of other peoples' lives contained complex feelings that I wanted to express.  I walked through that narrow door into a world that has sustained me ever since.  Hidden narratives, light and shadow, absence love and loss, drollery and mourning, figures painted in and figures scrubbed out, composite compositions, diptychs, triptychs, trying to depict, not the snapshots, but the psychological and emotional spaces that the snapshots conjure.

I've had solo shows more or less steadily since 1975.  I had my first solo show in New York when I was 42.  I felt like I had finally made the big leagues.  Well, as the equivalent of a G Leaguer getting a 10 day NBA contract, or the last utility player at the far end of the bench, but still.  I went into a little more detail in the 50th Reunion Yearbook, and if you're ravenous for more specifics there's my website at <johnwinship> It's a couple of years out of date but it gives the big picture.  I'm currently represented by The Carver Hill Gallery in Camden, Maine.

To see more of my work please visit: http://johnwinship.com/