Welcome to the
AUGUSTA ART GUILD & GALLERY
A non-profit organization supporting community arts 

Gretchen DeWeese Bainum Gretchen has been making art all her life. She was born and raised in Montana in a “house full of art.” Both of her parents were artists and making art was a way of life. Gretchen and her four siblings were taught at an early age that art is a “response-ability”, that is, it is a valid and powerful way to respond to the events, both internal and external, of life. She attended the University of Montana, Morehead State University (Kentucky) and Montana State University where she obtained her degree in Elementary Education. Although she did study art at all of these institutions, her parents remain the biggest influence on her artwork. Always enamored of animals and nature, she spent the first thirty years of her life in the West, working on various ranches in Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming. She and her husband moved to a farm in rural eastern Kentucky in 1980, where they raised their three children. She taught at the Flemingsburg Elementary School from 1991 to 2015, including K-6 Art and developed an after school art program during these years. During these years she returned to Montana during the summer where she worked for the US Forest Service. She retired from teaching in 2015 and continues to live on the Kentucky farm where she spends her time wandering the pastures and woodlands, caring for horses and cattle, gardening and making art. She has worked with a wide variety of media over the years, including Papier Mâché, watercolor, acrylic, oil paintstick, bookmaking, murals and computer art, and most recently, tissue paper collage. Her work includes painting horses for Louisville’s Gallopaloosa in 2004 and Lexington’s HorseMania in 2022, and has been shown in galleries in Augusta, Morehead, Grayson and Paris, Kentucky and Bozeman and Billings, Montana. In March of 2024 she had a solo exhibition of 16 tissue paper collages at the National Arts Club in New York City.Artist Statement: “Painting with Paper” Statement: Although I have worked with many different media, tissue paper collage is currently my favorite. Here is a brief description: Tissue paper collage: When using this medium, an artist has to think in shapes and colors, not lines as we usually do. At first this was quite challenging for me because when we draw, we outline the image first, then add colors inside the lines. Now I tend to see images as shapes, with gradually changing colors, sometimes with very defined edges, sometimes less defined. I mostly use tissue paper because of it translucent quality. This allows the layered colors to blend. Bleeding tissue allows for more blending, but it is also messier, as the colors often “bleed” more than I want. Colorfast tissue generally will allow enough blending, especially with light colors. I also use origami paper if I want to completely block out the colors underneath, since it is opaque, but still thin enough to flatten well on the canvas. It also comes in a huge range of colors. Sometimes I add grasses or leaves that have been pressed and dried, further increasing the texture of the piece. The adhesive I use is acrylic gloss medium, applying it underneath and on top of the pieces of tissue paper. Although I started using an Elmers glue/water mixture as an adhesive, I have found I prefer the plastic, glossy qualities of acrylic. Because tissue paper easily fades in sunlight, I always spray the finished piece with an archival UV protectant to prevent the loss of color over time. When impressionist artist Henri Matisse began using cutouts in his artwork. He liked to say that he was “drawing with scissors”. I like to think that I extend his idea when I describe my collages as “painting with paper”.