Rita Daly

My art work is primarily abstract and strives for intensity over beauty. It is influenced by two life forces: at a young age by my talented abstract-expressionist mom who was not a stickler for detail; and later, by my career as a journalist where chasing the hottest news of the day in a big Canadian city was more exciting than writing a flowery feature piece.

I have an innate desire for ‘messiness’ in art, a sort of stumbling or wrestling with the paint that can best be described as an inner discourse on the canvas. I love layering and working with shapes. At the same time, I look to produce work that is insightful or curious, sometimes with humour, and that captures a viewer’s interest on subjects as varied as an unlucky seagull’s death or a booming beauty industry. I am currently doing a series on the newspaper industry’s demise. Ultimately, my goal is to produce art that I care about.