Winfred Rembert was born on November 22nd, 1945 in Cuthbert, Georgia and spent much of his childhood laboring in the cotton fields in the pre-civil rights South. He earned 20 cents a day and was only able to attend school two days per week. Through his paintings, Winfred bears witness to the conditions during the 1950’s and 60’s in the segregated South. His work tells the grim stories of his near lynching, his years spent on a prison chain gang, but also his rich experiences with a strong family and a tight knit African American community filled with wonderful characters, music and magical childhood places.
Winfred is a self-taught painter. He hand-tools and paints with dye on leather canvases. He first learned about leather tooling while serving time in a Georgian prison. His powerful paintings made on large sheets of thick leather are characterized by his love of rhythmic patterning, physical and visual texture, strong color and contrast and narrative clarity.
His body of work has brought Rembert comparisons to noted African-American artists Hale Woodruff, Jacob Lawrence, Horace Pippin, and Romare Bearden. Winfred lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut. His paintings are represented in a number of important public and private collections, and were the subject of a major exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery in 2000.
A documentary film about his life, All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert, was released in 2011. It was announced as "Best of Festival" at the Arlington International Film Festival held in Arlington, Massachusetts in October 2012. The showing of this film inspired the idea to bring Winfred to Arlington High School as an artist in residence. He will be there from March 24 through March 28, 2014 working with Visuals Art, English, History and Metco teachers and students.
Winfred is a self-taught painter. He hand-tools and paints with dye on leather canvases. He first learned about leather tooling while serving time in a Georgian prison. His powerful paintings made on large sheets of thick leather are characterized by his love of rhythmic patterning, physical and visual texture, strong color and contrast and narrative clarity.
His body of work has brought Rembert comparisons to noted African-American artists Hale Woodruff, Jacob Lawrence, Horace Pippin, and Romare Bearden. Winfred lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut. His paintings are represented in a number of important public and private collections, and were the subject of a major exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery in 2000.
A documentary film about his life, All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert, was released in 2011. It was announced as "Best of Festival" at the Arlington International Film Festival held in Arlington, Massachusetts in October 2012. The showing of this film inspired the idea to bring Winfred to Arlington High School as an artist in residence. He will be there from March 24 through March 28, 2014 working with Visuals Art, English, History and Metco teachers and students.