How I Became a Painter: Trevor Winkfield in Conversation with Miles Champion

"If all art aspires toward the condition of music, as Pater wrote, Trevor Winkfield must be counted among the most successful artists of all time," John Ashbery has declared. In the first of the two extended conversations that comprise How I Became a Painter , Winkfield (born 1944) reminisces about his student days in Leeds and London in the 1960s, and his early activities as an artist, writer, editor and translator; the second conversation focuses on Winkfield’s life after he moved to New York City in 1969, including his decisive return to painting (prompted by the notorious survey of Richard Tuttle’s work at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1975) and his various collaborations with poets of the New York School. Winkfield’s conversation partner throughout is the English-born, New York–based poet Miles Champion.