"Spring Thaw" Painting

RitaMarie was born in Providence RI and studied painting at Worcester Art Museum School before attending Bennington College, where she studied with Pat Adams and Phillip Woffard and received an MFA in painting and sculpture. Initially drawn to color field painting, her exposure to the remnants of strict formalism at Bennington caused her to begin exploring figure/ground relationships and the inclusion of cues from the outer world. She began thinking of how abstraction could hold meanings and act metaphorically. She sought ways to engage her viewers who might otherwise pass over color field work as pretty decorations. Moving to NYC her painting continued this shift including more referential markers. She pushed her painting into a realm between landscape and abstraction. The abstract use of color creates an experience of light and place, the color and the light act as phenomena in the painting. At this time she began to practice meditation and began to think of art as a spiritual expression and her paintings as an extension of meditative work. She strove to express in her paintings, the lessons of spiritual growth and the internal events which we all experience, which change and shape us. In the past few years she has begun to work in series to focus and structure her work. A narrative is carried throughout the paintings, the narrative of the interchange between the artist and the work.