Enjoyment of Colour on display
Record-breaking marathon runner Rita Banks is giving people the chance to see the world as she sees it, in vibrant colour, through a new exhibition of her paintings.
The Staffordshire artist's work is now on show at the Museum of Cannock Chase.
The work features semi-abstract landscape and floral paintings by Rita, aged 74, of Stone.
The artist specialises in her use of bright and varied colour and the exhibition, called Enjoyment of Colour, is on until Feburary 23.
Rita has been painting since she was a child, when she first realised her fascination with colour.
Despite her passion for painting, she studied computer science at Staffordshire University before she started to seriously pursue artwork by doing a foundation degree in fine art at Stafford College.
This was followed by a portrait diploma in Chelsea in the mid 1990s before completing a BA Fine Art Painting course at the University of Wolverhampton. All the work from her course has been sold on.
Finally, she studied at Staffordshire University where she took the opportunity to be a consultant artist for research projects on the development of children's art across the world in the UK, China and Switzerland.
She is now retired but keeps up her love for painting and holds exhibitions in the UK and across the seas at Australia and mainland Europe.
The artist also has a passion for running and broke the world record for the number of marathons run in a year by completing 52 in 1989 when she was 45. She originally aimed to do 45 marathons to match her age but smashed that target and from this she went on to represent Great Britain running everything from 5k cross country runs to marathons.
She said: "What inspires me changes constantly. For a large period of time, it was the skies and landscapes and then I swapped into colour and really started exploring which brought me to the paintings I create today.
"I just hope people can come along and enjoy viewing the artwork as much as I loved painting it."
Her work has varied over time to cover not only landscapes and flowers, but also portraits.
The museum at Valley Road is open weekdays from 11am to 4pm and the last admission 3.30pm.
