Making Art
- Tina Witherspoon
- Feb 26
- 2 min read
Some say that making art can be an act of resistance. In times of trouble, art lifts us up or makes us think. I’ve been cultivating an art practice for about 3 years now and I actually enjoy the process more than the outcome, which is astonishing considering I started my creative life wanting to be a movie star. I used to live for applause, and now I couldn’t care less about being in front of an audience. I prefer to make things with my hands.
I discovered gelli plate printing a few years ago and it intrigued me. I started playing around with magazine sheets and acrylic paint and learning about the color wheel and I got hooked. I made a whole lot of ugly prints for the first couple of years while I practiced the different methods of trying to create something I’d call art. I haven’t shared anything I’ve made before now, and after thousands of attempts, these are my current favorites. I'm calling it art, but in reality, this is just what I do in the winter, when I can’t be in the garden and it soothes me.
Typically I’ll play music or listen to a podcast while I get to work rolling out paint onto the plate. I work quickly, going through dozens of globs of paint and sheets of paper and when I take a breath, three hours have passed. Some prints need a second or third round before I decide they are done, and some go straight to the done pile. I photograph each one to use in digital art, and some get cut up to use in collage. I incorporate everyday objects into the process to create shapes and use recycled packing materials to create stencils and masks. Anything that would get thrown away in my house is first used in the printing process.
This diptych (above) is my favorite form of printing. I just keep adding paint and pulling a print until I have two, sometimes three of the same basic composition, but ghosts of each other. At some point I might turn these prints into greeting cards or framed abstracts, but for now, I’m living for the process.
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