About

Bio

Rita Dee (b. Asheville, NC 1996) is an American artist currently living in New York, NY. Her paintings draw from fantastical fungal worlds and landscapes that are inspired by her experiences and relationship to nature as a woman. Casted from oral storytelling from the Appalachian Mountains and the ethereal bonds between native fauna, flora and the feminine form, Peters uses these agents to explore ties between the earthly and otherworldly. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Painting at the New York Academy of Art (expected 2027) and holds a BS from the University of North Carolina Wilmington (2019).

Statement

My work in oil painting depicts fantastical fungal dreamscapes inspired by my personal experiences and mythologized connection to nature as a woman. Considering practices of oral history and storytelling from the Appalachian Mountains and the ethereal bonds between native fauna, flora, and the feminine form, I explore ties between the earthly and the otherworldly. My academic background in biology and my Appalachian heritage inform the content and thematic concerns in my work, while the dreamlike and expressive formal approach is deeply intuitive. My paintings build a narrative mythology of the female body, and respond to a challenging political climate with radical imagery of pleasure and joy.

Pinks, greens, and purples dominate my palette, and I paint largely from imagination and memory. Inspired by Art Nouveau and Fin de siècle illustrative practices, Symbolist and AbEx art, and the spiritual imagery of the Tarot, I devise my own visual language combining figuration with abstraction. Much of my current work focuses on erotic scenes involving insects, layering a fascination with entomology over a subversion of the tropic female nude. The empowered female subjects of my paintings are generative beings, actively shaping the colorfields and naturally-inspired environments in which they are immersed. I respond to a millennium of masculine depictions of female archetypes with an assertive yet emotional ideal of embodiment.