He briefly attended the University of California, Berkeley and the San Francisco Art Institute before returning to New York in July 1965.

Landfield moved into his loft at 94 Bowery in July 1967;[4] there, he continued to experiment with rollers, staining, hard-edge borders, and painted unstretched canvases on the floor for the first time.

Peter Young, Dan Christensen, Peter Reginato, Eva Hesse, Carlos Villa, William Pettet, David R. Prentice, Kenneth Showell, David Novros, Joan Jonas, Michael Steiner, Frosty Myers, Tex Wray, Larry Zox, Larry Poons, Robert Povlich, Neil Williams, Carl Gliko, Billy Hoffman, Lee Lozano, Pat Lipsky, John Griefen, Brice Marden, James Monte, John Chamberlain, Donald Judd, Frank Stella, Carl Andre, Dan Graham, Robert Smithson, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Kenneth Noland, Clement Greenberg, Bob Neuwirth, Joseph Kosuth, Mark di Suvero, Brigid Berlin, Lawrence Weiner, Rosemarie Castoro, Marjorie Strider, Dorothea Rockburne, Leo Valledor, Peter Forakis and Marisol were just a few of the artists and writers he befriended and saw regularly at Max's Kansas City - the favorite place for artists in New York City during the 1960s.

[6] By 1970 Landfield was recognized as one of the first painters to have led the "movement away from the geometric, hard-edge, and minimal, toward more lyrical, sensuous, romantic abstractions in colors which were softer and more vibrant.

[9] In October 1969 he had his first one-man exhibition at the David Whitney Gallery in NYC, featuring works of that period which were partially inspired by Chinese Landscape painting.

His painting Diamond Lake 1969, 108 x 168 inches, was acquired from Philip Johnson by the Museum of Modern Art in 1972 and was installed in the lobby of MoMA for several months.

During 1970 Landfield participated in a three-person show in New York City at the David Whitney Gallery and he had solo exhibitions in Cleveland, St. Louis and in Corona Del Mar, California.

For ten years from 1975 until 1984 four of Landfield's paintings from the collection of Philip Johnson were installed in the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building on Park Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets in Midtown Manhattan, on the so-called Mark Rothko wall.

Spending the early summer of 1980 on the Caribbean island of St. Barts Landfield produced a series of india ink and acrylic paintings on paper there.

[14] In 1989-1990 Landfield began correspondence with the late art historian, Professor Daniel Robbins, about the neglected historical understanding of abstract painting in New York since the mid-1960s.

In 1994 Landfield presided over two public panel discussions at the New York Studio School and the Tenri Institute both in Manhattan called Cool and Collected or Too Hot to Handle.

Currently he lives and works in TriBeCa, and teaches at The Art Students League of New York; during a recent lecture there he said "It's important for maximum freedom for an artist, to stay under the radar for as long as possible".

[24][25][26] In the fall of 2013 his paintings were included in an exhibition called Come Together: Surviving Sandy, Year One curated by Phong Bui and The Daedalus Foundation.