bio
Allison Rietta, a Toronto-based abstract artist, began her full-time artistic career in 2020 after a 25-year tenure as a creative director in branding and marketing within the graphic design industry. Rietta holds an honours degree in environmental and industrial design from the Ontario College of Art, and subsequently pursued a correspondence course at the Turps Painting School 22/23.
Rietta’s artistic expression draws inspiration from mystic geometry, nature, and sacred sound. Her geometric abstractions mirror her spiritual practice of meditation and sound healing. Her work is characterized by geometric rhythms, vibrant colours, and simple shapes and forms.
Rietta’s artistic contributions have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Toronto, New York, and London. Notably, she was twice longlisted for the Jackson’s Painting Prize in the United Kingdom and shortlisted for the Visual Art Open International Emerging Artist Award. Her work has garnered both private and public recognition, with the Holbrook Danville exclusively acquiring Allison’s artwork for its newly established 42-room boutique hotel in Danville’s Old West End District, United States.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
My abstract paintings and collages explore mystic geometry, symbols and patterns, working predominately in watercolours and acrylics. My work is informed by my graphic design background, and my spiritual practice of sound and meditation. Drawing on the sacred sounds of singing bowls, my pieces exude melodic vibrations in which colours transcend the visual into the auditory. I see a relationship with the healing properties of sound and geometric rhythms, and my work with the sound bowls overlaps with my geometric artwork. I blend the inner and outer character traits of spirituality with the relationship between simple shapes and forms.
My fascination with geometric shapes—especially the circle—hold a spiritual representation for me, as it can represent both a sound or a vibration. The controlled energy of creating precise circles and straight lines by hand on one surface bursts out into a plasticity of form on another. The repetitive layering of watercolour in my work requires time in its making by necessity, but it also allows space for new thoughts and creativity to emerge as I move in between surfaces. The rich process and careful way each circle layers, yet manages to confuse which layer sits on another is visually absorbing, and conveys a meditative optical quality.
My art is about the freedom we can find when we allow ourselves to break away from the self-imposed structures that contain us. It is an ever-evolving exploration of the relationship between form, shape, line and colour that comes from an intense curiosity and observation of patterns in nature; and in the ebb and flow, light and dark, order and chaos of the spaces around me. In this sense my work expresses the uncertainty that comes from feeling the oppositional forces that exist in and around all of us.
CV
Group Exhibitions
2025 - Flow Art Space Basel Group Show, Basel, Switzerland (upcoming)
2025 - SF Art Fair, with Spence Gallery, San Francisco, California, USA
2025 - The Affordable Art Fair New York, with Spence Gallery, New York, USA
2024 - ‘Winter Parade’, Gagné Contemporary, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
2024 - ‘Peace’, Gallery Lagom, Creemore, Ontario, Canada
2024 - ‘Dreaming in Color’, Yellow Studio Gallery, Cross River NY, USA
2024 - The Local Gallery for DesignTO, Toronto, Canada
2023 - ‘Prints & Multiples’, PMC Gallery, Toronto, Canada
2023 - Delphian Open Call Exhibition, Unit1 Gallery, London, England UK
2023 - ‘A Geometry of Beauty’, Gagné Contemporary, Toronto, Canada
2023 - Focus Art Fair, Chelsea Industrial, New York, USA
2023 - Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, ON / AGH Art Sale
2023 - Artist Project Contemporary Art Fair, Toronto, Canada
2022 - The Other Art Fair by Saatchi Art, Brooklyn, USA
2022 - Artist Project Contemporary Art Fair, Toronto, Canada
Solo Exhibitions
2024 - ‘The Magic of Geometry’, The Lobby by Heaps Estrin, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
2024 - ‘Geometria’, Gallery Lagom, Creemore, Ontario, Canada
2023 - ‘Colour of Sound’, Cultural Goods Gallery, Toronto, Canada
2022 - ‘Dream Wheel’, Remote Gallery, Toronto, Canada
2021 - ‘Inflorescence’, Imagefoundry, Toronto, Canada
Residencies
2024 - Arteles 'Silence Awareness Existence' Artist Residency in Finland
Press + Publications
2024 - Longlisted, Jackson’s Painting Prize UK
2023 - Shortlisted, Visual Art Open 2023 UK and International Emerging Artist Award
2023 - Longlisted, Jackson’s Painting Prize UK
2022 - British Vogue, ‘Vogues Gallery’ March/April/May 2022
2021 - Rietta, A. E. (n.d.). Curator On The Go, Podcast, Season 2, Episode 26
Collectors
Holbrook Danville, Virginia USA
Earls Restaurant Toronto, Canada
Giannone Petricone Architects Toronto, Canada
Villa Uitzicht op Texel, Waddenhof, Netherlands
Education
2023 - Turps Painting School Correspondence Course, London UK
1993 - The Ontario College of Art, Toronto, Canada