Meet Rita Aldridge | Painter and ceramicist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Rita Aldridge and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rita, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking.
When I was 19, I got on a flight from my home in London to LAX with little to no plan. Nine years later, I consider Los Angeles my home. That leap of faith allowed me to discover the life I had always dreamed of. I got sober, applied to art school, and this May graduated with a BFA.

For the first part of my art “career,” though, I was incredibly controlled. Risk was not something I liked to incorporate into my work. But in my third year of studies, I was given a studio right next to the ceramics lab — something I had always wanted to explore but never quite “got around” to. In reality, it just felt risky.

With kilns and glazes suddenly woven into my daily routine, I decided to venture into ceramics, only to discover that it came with far more unpredictability than I had anticipated. In painting, I could obsess over every detail to my heart’s content. I could let a piece dry, paint over what I didn’t like, leave it, return to it, erase, repaint, and refine endlessly. Ceramics offered no such luxury.

To my dismay, I had fallen in love with a process that could never truly be controlled — one that could turn against me at any stage on the journey toward a finished work. Through countless cracks in the kiln, limbs blown apart by hidden air pockets, and heads collapsing into their own bodies from lack of structure, I’ve learned to relinquish some of that control and allow risk to play a much larger role in my practice.

And though I haven’t agreed with every outcome, I’ve found some magical moments somewhere between myself and the ceramic gods.

For my thesis show, I pushed this relationship with risk even further through the beginning of my project ‘Gallery Series’, where audience members were invited to use acrylic paint pens to draw, write, or mark whatever they wished onto a ceramic bust. The result was better than I could have imagined.

Through these experiences, I have found that risk and I actually make a great team in the studio… and beyond.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
What sets my work apart is probably the balance between confrontation and relatability. A lot of my art revolves around women and the strange expectations placed onto them — the pressure to look a certain way, behave a certain way, stay likable, stay beautiful, stay composed. I’m interested in pushing against that. The women in my work often feel exaggerated, emotional, awkward, funny, or even slightly uncomfortable. I think there’s something powerful in allowing women to exist outside of perfection or palatability.

At the same time, I never want the work to feel closed off or overly intellectual. I like making pieces that don’t answer every question. When I create something, I’m telling a story, but I try to leave enough room for someone else to project their own experiences onto it, too. The best feeling for me is when someone looks at a piece and sees part of themselves in it. I think you can learn a lot about a person based on the memory or feeling a work brings out in them. Human connection is really the center of my practice.

I work across painting, ceramics, and installation, and I’m most excited by the way those mediums now speak to one another. Ceramics especially changed the way I work and think. It pushed me away from perfectionism and toward risk, unpredictability, and experimentation. I’m proud that over the years I’ve allowed myself to become less controlled and more honest.

Professionally, my path definitely wasn’t easy or traditional. There were many moments where I questioned whether pursuing art seriously was realistic. I’ve had to overcome a lot of self-doubt, perfectionism, and fear of failure. I think one of the hardest parts of being an artist today is how easy it is to compare yourself to others or feel pressure to constantly prove your worth through visibility, success, or numbers online. Over time, I’ve learned that building a real practice requires persistence more than anything else. You have to keep making work even when you’re uncertain, even when things are moving slowly, and even when you feel misunderstood.

More than anything, I want the world to know that my work comes from a genuine place. I’m not interested in presenting polished versions of people or pretending to have everything figured out. I’m much more interested in vulnerability, contradiction, humor, discomfort, and the emotional messiness that makes people human.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Monday
Go to Dupars for pancakes
Walk down melrose avenue
Shop (mostly thrift)
Get a quick piercing at body elelctric
Visit the Cat Cafe
Dinner at Jon and Vinnys

Tuesday
Breakfast at Beechwood Cafe
Walk the stairs
Go home and change for a nightout
Tacos at pinches
Trivia night at Barney’s Beanery

Wednesday
Arts Deli
Drive out the Angeles forest
Hike
Grab boba on the way home
Order prince street pizza
Go to the comedy store

Thursday
Drive out to Venice
Grab breakfast tacos
Walk the venice strip
Stop at grocery store for some snacks
Drive out to Lechuza beach
Lie in the sun for a few hours with a book
Drive home
Pass out in front of the tv

Friday
Drive downtown
Get food at grand central
Go to the Broad
Get a tattoo
Go shopping in Santee Alley
Dinner at Bestia

Saturday
Goodwill and Savers Extravaganza
Get drive thru food in between

Sunday
Sleep in
Walk the hollywood resevoir
Grab fruit at the fruit stand
Go see a horror movie

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Some people say that artists are solitary creatures, sitting alone in dark studios, figuring out how to communicate with the outside world through our work, since we cannot do it any other way. But alas, they are mistaken. Without the excitement and inspiration that comes from our peers, teachers, and mentors, our worlds become small, and creations become repetitive. Support, encouragement, and the free flow of ideas with other like-minded souls are truly what have propped me up along the way. I would like to dedicate this shoutout to my incredible mentor, Tom Lawson, a talented painter and educator who not only encouraged my ideas but pushed them even further than I had planned for them to go. I believe every artist needs a sweet, Scottish sounding board, so I am forever grateful for mine. Thank you for everything Tom!

Website: https://ritaaldridge.com

Instagram: @ritaevealdridge