Wingfield is a digital photography artist. Born in Canada in 1970 from a South Korean father and a Belgian mother, she was raised in Paris and studied at The Institute of Political Studies in Paris (Sciences Po). She moved to the United Kingdom in the early 1990s. She trained in drawing, painting and sculpture at the Charles Cecil Studio, Florence, Central St Martin, London and The Heatherley School of Fine Art, London before moving her focus to photography which has since become her preferred medium.
Wingfield draws her inspiration from the living world. Concentrating on long-term projects, her practice is driven by an urge to uncover and explore the purity and deep mystery of our ecosphere and to monumentalise the small and often overlooked flora and fauna that are intrinsic to life on this planet. The work is characterised by an unashamed quest for the beauty infused in souls-capes.
Guided by the vast depth of poetry and philosophy written in honour of nature over centuries, Wingfield has developed her own photographic language. Her work is often a visual dialogue with existing texts or poems.
Trees prevail in much of Wingfield’s work. She has always felt a spiritual presence amongst them. A desire to communicate their sublime and sacred role in our human existence has driven the artist to dedicate much of her photography to the subject, to elevate trees as nature’s Gods. Favouring a mindful process of deep investigation, Wingfield observes the same trees over many months and years establishing a spiritual discourse and personal relationship with each of them in a process not dissimilar to portraiture. The resulting images remind us that trees are majestic pillars of timeless wisdom that offer sanctuary and stillness in contrast to the noise and fatigue of contemporary life.
Fascinated by the symmetry, shape and form that emerges from the natural world, Wingfield also turns her camera to skies, glacial ice, rivers, and deserts. She seeks to capture the continuing movement of dust, water, and air to reveal brief moments of natural abstraction that unify the earth’s elements.
The careful marriage between each composition and the paper upon which it will be revealed is an essential stage in Wingfield’s practice. She is fascinated with the subtle power different papers have to manipulate an image, whether she is seeking accidental abstractions within the fibres, the glow of a metallised finish or a heavily textured surface. Particularly drawn to early Japanese examples she often uses papers made from mulberry bark, one of the very first materials employed to make paper, over 2000 years ago. She favours fine art papers from Hahnemühle and Awagami.
Whilst Wingfield is producing work within the context of the global environmental crisis her work does not directly confront these issues. Instead, she focuses on a longing to reconnect with nature. She quietly reminds us of the pristine and magnificent world we inhabit and of our duty to respect it. Her beautifully composed photographs are a call to worship, and they enrich our experience of the natural world.
