Greetings & welcome to my Etsy shop!

My name is Xtina, and I'm an artist born and raised in and currently based out of Miami Florida. I'm primarily a fine artist/painter who has always used digital design and digital media, and I stumbled into textile design in mid 2021 when I was building a website and looking into integrating "print on demand" ordering for fine art prints/posters of my original paintings.

I started playing around with throwing my designs onto clothing and here we are! Many of the textile designs/patterns are composite digital edits of real oil or acrylic paintings, some are created completely digitally, and many are what I like to call "hybrid paintings", a combination of hand-painted and digitally created elements.

"Gardening, not architecture" is a phrase that I recently discovered while watching an interview with David Byrne -- he was discussing creativity, and referring to working on various Talking Heads albums where Brian Eno was the producer. Sometimes you work on a creative project and you have it all planned out ahead of time, you know exactly what you plan to create --architecture. But sometimes the most beautiful creative ideas come to fruition and become something wonderful only after planting the seeds and cultivating the idea, over time, letting it grow organically --gardening.

Most, but not all of my work that I personally consider something special, comes from "gardening, not architecture." Working on something, putting it down, coming back to it later with fresh eyes. Particularly with some of my more geometric and intricate designs, it sometimes feels like I'm solving a puzzle, or a complex math problem.

On the architecture side of this metaphor, I have an ongoing series of Sea Creature paintings. Growing up in Florida, I spent a lot of time in and around the ocean. I started painting sea creatures during the pandemic as a personal challenge, and love diving into research about each creature as I work on the paintings. I love bright colors and there are so many interesting, colorful creatures lurking just below the surface!

So, here we are, the end of 2021, and that is pretty much my art story. I also occasionally paint murals, but those are a little more difficult to sell on Etsy.

I'm working with one of the best quality printers for my print on demand items, and adding new products all the time as I create new designs, paint new creatures, and experiment past traditional printed media into a whole new world of wearable, functional, completely unique artwork.

In addition to the growing selection of printed textiles, clothing and accessories, I also have a selection of fine art prints of some of my pieces on canvas, framed or unframed poster art prints, as well as some intricate hand-painted objects. A limited selection of original paintings and artworks are for sale as well, and will be added to the store soon.

Thanks for visiting and feel free to contact me with any questions!