Stephen Winters (b. Rome, New York) is an artist based in Bakersfield, California whose work examines animal consciousness, ecological systems, and the unstable boundary between individual organisms and the environments they inhabit.

For the past five years, Winters has lived and worked along California’s Kern River, where sustained observation of the riparian ecosystem has become central to his practice. His experiences with falconry, beekeeping, land stewardship, field recording, and close encounters with wildlife inform a body of work that moves between careful observation and abstraction.

Working primarily in monumental graphite drawing, painting, and sound, Winters depicts animals, swarms, trees, weather, and other natural forms as parts of larger systems. Individual bodies dissolve into habitat, collective organisms become singular forms, and recognizable imagery shifts into fields of movement, pattern, and mark.

Winters received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007, where he studied painting and sculpture. He later apprenticed with sculptor Evan Lewis and artist and designer Brian Kerrigan. His work has included exhibitions, commissions, public projects, and interdisciplinary environmental programming. In 2022, he received a California Arts Council grant supporting a public installation at Okihi, a 14-acre environmental and educational site along the Kern River.

Winters also serves in a leadership role with the White Wolf Wellness Foundation, whose work at Okihi integrates environmental education, arts programming, land stewardship, and community engagement.