- Artist's medium: Painter
- Email the Artist: Click here
- Website address: http://www.ritapalm.com/
- Artist location: NSW
Rita was born in Sussex in the U.K. but spent most of her life in Southern Africa. She met and married her late husband in a small town in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) whilst they were both working in the local Bank. During the ensuing twelve years they were transferred by the Bank to many small towns in Rhodesia and Zambia before settling, with their two young daughters, in Salisbury (Harare) when her husband left the Bank to start his own food manufacturing company.
Though having had no formal art training, Rita had always been keenly interested in drawing and sketching and, following the gift of a “Beginners Oil Painting Set” in the early seventies, she was immediately captivated by the medium and her enduring love of oil painting of born. Between running the home, bringing up children and helping her husband to run his business, she painted as much as possible and held her first solo exhibition in 1976. Almost all the forty paintings on display were sold and the exhibition became an annual event until 1980 when she moved to Natal in South Africa.
At that time seascapes were very popular and Rita was kept busy supplying several galleries and dealing with commissions. She also participated in several group exhibitions and held three or four solo ones. In the late eighties she was invited by the managing director of a newly opened hotel/conference centre to mount a permanent solo exhibition. This proved to be very popular and was maintained until late 1995 when she and her partner left South Africa for Australia.
On arrival in Perth they purchased a caravan and embarked on a tour of the country which lasted for two years before settling on the Mid North Coast.
Rita paints mainly in traditional/realist style and her paintings are widely represented in private and corporate collections in various countries, especially South Africa, Britain and America. Nowadays she concentrates primarily on trying to capture various aspects of Australia’s unique natural beauty.
