Wood was trained as a craftsman and designer as well as a painter. After spending 1923 at the Académie Julian in Paris, he returned to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where, in 1927, he was commissioned to do a stained-glass window. Knowing little about stained glass, he went to Germany to seek craftsmen to assist him. While there he was deeply influenced by the sharply detailed paintings of various German and Flemish masters of the 16th century. Wood subsequently abandoned his Impressionist style and began to paint in the sharply detailed, realistic manner by which he is now known.