about me

Rita Argen Auerbach is an internationally recognized watercolor artist and educator who is represented in numerous museum, corporate and private collections throughout the United States. Her award winning paintings have portrayed such subjects as Buffalo’s architecture, Chautauqua Institution’s Victoriana, and landscapes inspired by extensive travel in this country and abroad. Auerbach’s works are characterized by strong value contrasts created by light and shade using rich luminous transparent watercolor.

National and International juried exhibitions have included her paintings such as The Adirondacks National Exhibition of American Watercolors, Pennsylvania Watercolor Society, Montana Watermedia, Mid-Atlantic Regional Watercolor Exhibition, National League of American Pen Women, and the Erie and Niagara Landscape Exhibition in Dortmund, Germany. Rita was invited for a one artist exhibition in The Academy of Art in Riga, Latvia.

Rita’s paintings have been exhibited in Western New York at the Burchfield Penney Art Center, Art Dialogue Gallery, Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Kenan Art Center, Big Orbit Gallery, Carnegie Art Center, Castellani Art Museum, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Chautauqua Center for the Visual Arts, and others.

She received bachelors and masters Degrees in Art Education from State University of New York at Buffalo. A secondary art teacher for twenty years in the Clarence Central Schools and district art department chair, she was named Western New York Art Educator of the Year in 1993 and is listed in “Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers”. In 2004, Auerbach was named Distinguished Alumni, in appreciation for service to College and Community.

Rita has conducted painting excursion workshops in Costa Rica, France, Italy and Spain. She is presently on the faculty of Chautauqua Institution Special Studies Program and was a delegate to the Chautauqua Institution/Eisenhower Institute Conference on U.S.-Soviet Relations in Riga, Latvia. Her sketches of the trip became the Conference’s official gift to the Soviet Government and are published in “Sketches and Reflections of a Journey”. Articles about her painting techniques have been recently included in American Artist Magazine and Watercolor.

A Council member of the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY and past president of the Buffalo Society of Artists, she is listed in “Who’s Who in American Art” and “Who’s Who in America”. The Arts Council in Buffalo and Erie County awarded Rita Achievement in the Arts, Individual Artist Award, March, 2009.

The U.S. State Department recently selected three Auerbach Buffalo Architectural paintings for the “Art in the Embassy Program”. For the “Herd About Buffalo” public art project, Rita painted two buffaloes which helped raise $1.3 million dollars for Roswell Park Cancer Institute and the Burchfield Penney Art Center.