Rita enjoyed oriental brush painting for more than 30 years. Her work has appeared in museum-juried shows from Washington, DC, to Mobile, Alabama, and her work is treasured by collectors all over the world. Rita and her husband, Gary, also a professional artist, lived in the mountains near Gatlinburg before her death in 2007.

Rita loved working with handmade rice papers, bamboo brushes and colored inks. She said that she tried to capture the "spirit of the image that has bounced in and out of my head for so long it can no longer stay there." She studied oriental brush painting with the masters and earned her own "red seal" to signify mastery of the medium.

Oriental brush painting includes many styles of painting that originated in China centuries ago and spread throughout Korea and Japan. The tools are the brush, ink, inkstone and paper. Brush painters speak simply from the power of their basic inspiration. Themes from nature are the basic subject matter, since Oriental Masters believe that "artistic beauty most often lies in that which is natural and has personality."