About

Rita Sennik is a contemporary fine artist living and working in Hampshire. Born in Kenya, she graduated as an architect from Nottingham University and worked extensively, both in Kenya and England till 2011. A 2014 Fine Art graduate from the Winchester School of Art, she is developing her practice as a painter.

She explores the emotional dynamics of being a woman through her paintings, celebrating the female form in its physical reality embodying the psyche within. The artist attempts to capture the immediacy, touch and movement of making, accentuating the tactility and texture of paint, to insist on parity between the subject, the process of creation and the substance of the work.

Curriculum Vitae

2014 Artist

2014 Southampton University (B.A.Fine Art)

1980 – 2011 Architect

1991 University of Newcastle- upon-Tyne (M.Phil.Architecture)

1980 University of Nottingham (B.Arch.Architecture)

1977 University of Nottingham (B.A,Architecture)

Exhibitions

‘Rita Sennik:
The Embrace and Shangri-la’

17^th December 2014 – 17^th January 2015
Wallspace Gallery, Winchester Discovery Centre, Winchester

‘tabula rasa’

Winchester School Of Art Fine Art Exhibition
10^th July – 14^th July 2014.
Barge House, Oxo Towers, London

WSA Degree Show

16^th June – 22^nd June 2014
Winchester School of Art, Winchester

Artist’s Statement

I am a strong woman hiding a fragile individual with a myriad of regrets, hurts and unfulfilled desires, who seeks resolution through her art. My work is a series of emotional self-portraits trying to resolve a dichotomy in self, in the belief that it will resonate with others.

Knowing my subject intimately, the female face (facets), body (formats), relationships (frames) and the random (fragments), I use it to express the emotional spectrum which lies within the extremes of love and hate. Each work whether a series or an individual piece covers some aspect of this unquantifiable illusive phenomena, feelings.

In February 2014 on a field trip to Berlin, I saw the work of Karl Otto Gotz at the Neue Nationalgalerie and was intrigued by his technique of speed painting using acrylics and the ensuing spontaneity in his work. I have ever since embraced this technique as a starting point for all my paintings, adapting it to my practice and embellishing as the work demands. Technique, method, process… evolve with each new painting, and in spite of making copious notes I can never seem to replicate a previous work at a later date or particularly want to. I make within the moment without thought. My art reflects this.