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Rita Schwab Fine Arts Artist Biography
Rita Schwab was born in Heidelberg, Germany in 1952. Rita has always loved to paint and do things with her hands since childhood. She has been closely connected to nature and has honored the earth cycles throughout her entire life. Besides being an artist Rita has been a master gardener, a meditator and yoga practitioner for 40 years. She is a part-time musician and has raised three children.
Rita graduated from High School in Heidelberg, Germany. In 1971, she studied Art Education at the Heidelberg University and then
transferred to the University of South Florida, Tampa on a Fulbright scholarship in 1973. Rita changed her major to Fine Arts and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of South Florida in 1977. Upon graduation, Rita moved to Tallahassee, FL in 1979 where she received a work-study program at the Florida State University in Tallahassee and received her Master’s Degree in Fiber Arts in 1981.
Rita has worked for various art organizations as Assistant Art Director, Educator and College Adjunct, Workshop Leader and Private Instructor. Rita has been a self-employed studio artist since 1980. Rita spent over 20 years as a fiber artist practicing and teaching techniques in surface design, spinning, weaving, natural dyeing and more. She was sole proprietor of Rita Schwab Fiber Arts selling handwoven goods to over 75 galleries in the United States. Rita has always been a painter since childhood. She re-immersed herself into painting after a fire took her fiber arts studio.
For the past 15 years Rita’s medium has been primarily painting into fresco, a mixed media using primarily lime for texture. Her fresco paintings are in oils on wood in a biomorphic and contemporary expression using organic elements. Recently Rita has shifted back to painting on canvas. Her abstract expressions have become free in style and ’spirit driven’. Her sense of color is vibrant, sensitive and diverse using sands and natural pigments for texture as well as oils and acrylics. All of her paintings are sealed for preservation, some with resins and Damar, others with water sealing protectors.
Rita is passionate about her art as well as her life style. Rita states, "It is all part of the whole. My life as an artist is dynamic, free- flowing, driven by inspiration in hope to create beauty and balance. Love of life and our fellow beings are essential”.
Rita lives presently in Englewood, FL. She keeps a studio in Florida as well as in New York during the summer months. Rita shows her work locally, nationally and internationally in galleries and museums, at juried fine art shows and artist cooperatives. Please visit her business Facebook page under Earth Elements to see her newest paintings and upcoming workshops and gallery shows.
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