Arcy Douglass: When I look at your work, I've always had this feeling that you're interested in both primitive and tribal art and also technological images generated by a computer. Your work feels like a hybrid, or blending of both of these worlds.
Terry Winters: I'm interested in accessing the irrational realms that so much tribal work describes, but using contemporary means to get there.
Arcy: Most tribal cultures do it so beautifully within their own languages, but if you're not within their culture, you can't access it in the same way.
Terry: Not in the same way, but those realms are here, now - they're still available. It's just a question of working very directly without nostalgia or sentiment - through our own culture.
...
Arcy: When you're looking through your books of reference images that you assemble, what are the qualities you're looking for that make you want to explore them in a series of drawings or in a painting?
Terry: It's really about following my own curiosity, it's a very intuitive response to images and materials - a desire on my part to make poetic connections, or at least to somehow experience these things as expressive forces.
from a 2007 interview in PORT
