Rita White is an Irish artist and print designer based in Ireland. Her background in nursing, psychology, and psychotherapy greatly influence her work, adding depth and meaning to her hand drawings. Rita also has a first-class honors degree in art & design.
While her work isn’t blatantly Irish, the stories behind Rita’s hand drawings are uniquely Irish. They have that story! The landscape, the birds, the ocean and layers of fabric and design that make up her work which becomes a hybridization of Irishness that has evolved into contemporary Irish design.
Rita’s ‘Birds on the Wheel’, migratory birds tells of how the Brent Geese fly all the way from Canada and Greenland and return to Ireland every winter, not unlike our human stories of Immigration. ‘Birds in the Reeds’ is about the long-necked birds that hide in the reeds with the mauve/grey Irish sky in the background. The ‘Gallop’ is about horse racing, but it is also about the gallop of life that we are all involved in while the layer of flowers symbolizes the energy to keep going. “It is about the excitement of that gallop, of the pushing forward regardless, knowing that one has to keep going until the end,” Rita says. Her choice of color is also uniquely Irish, some are of the Irish landscape and others are because Rita just loves color, especially against the backdrop of grey Irish days.
Rita’s designs are digitally printed onto luxurious silk and made into exciting silk scarves, ties and pocket squares. More recently she has added turbans, tops, dresses and even cushion covers.
