Pilgrems 1952 - 1964

This is 'Pilgrims' by Shirley Witebsky and it looks like it's made with printmaking techniques and mixed media. I can only imagine the process—layering colors, the trial and error, the intuition guiding each move. You can almost feel her hand at work, can't you? I bet she was thinking about movement, about people on a journey. I see these overlapping forms in blue, pink, and teal, all these looping lines, and it gives me a sense of people walking, or maybe even dancing together. There's something so raw and immediate about how Witebsky uses color and line, like she's baring her soul on paper. I think of other artists like Louise Bourgeois, or even Cy Twombly, who were also exploring similar themes of memory and emotion. It's like we're all in this big conversation across time, passing ideas back and forth. Anyway, Witebsky gets me thinking about how painting—or in this case printmaking—is a way of searching, a journey in itself.