Artist: Rita Swinford

Born in Manhattan, New York, Rita Swinford, M.D., is a self-taught photographer. Her interest in photography emerged as a teenager when she spent several years in evening classes taught by local artists skilled in watercolors and pastels. She completed her final training in medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston in 1997. For the past eight years she has been practicing pediatric nephrology at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston. She wishes for a clone, which would allow her more completely to fill both of the lives she leads, or, money to just do one well.

Artistic influences have come from a variety of sources: photographers Keith Carter, Lee Friedlander, Josef Hotlehner, Don Kirby, Ray K. Metzker, and Robert Weingarten; artists Paul Cezanne, M.C. Escher, Gustav Klimt, Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Jackson Pollack. Rita makes her home in Houston with Brian Ells, two cats and two dogs, who continually show her that on a daily basis curiosity and imagination are pure magic.

Rita Swinford
Rita.D.Swinford@uth.tmc.edu