Christopher Winfield has never known a life without art. He is the beneficiary of an uncommonly creative, mid-century American upbringing. From childhood, artistic activity surrounded him as a daily event. He saw his father, Rodney Winfield, a prestigious stained glass artist, jeweler, painter, and sculptor work through the flow of his ideas, solve creative problems, and bring his artistic concepts into being.
As a youth, Winfield learned many of the practices he witnessed by working as his father’s apprentice. Soon he excelled at repoussé, the technique of hammering silver from the reverse into low relief, and could successfully replicate his father’s designs. He shaped and sanded colored glass for the elder Winfield’s stained-glass commissions, which along with windows in many synagogues and churches included the celebrated Space Window in Washington, D.C.’s National Cathedral. These early experiences grounded him in both the integrity of craftsmanship and dedication to one’s personal vision. They also honed his eye to color, balance, and proportion— the essentials of good composition and design.
Winfield’s first forays into painting were small figurative pieces in a visionary mode, but he soon understood that this work arose from his father’s influence, and that his own voice lay somewhere very different. At Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he studied art and earned his degree, Winfield became intrigued with exploring surface over content. He found that his loosely painted backgrounds were of more interest to him than his apparent subjects, and he began to develop these for their own sake.