Rita Sala’s paintings exist in a state of becoming. Built through layers of paint and moments of revision, her figures appear, recede, and transform, carrying traces of what has been covered or left behind. Her practice moves fluidly between intuition and control, where colour, form, and gesture continuously reshape one another. What remains is an image that never fully settles, but stays open—both visually and conceptually.

Your paintings often seem to hover between presence and disappearance, forms emerging and dissolving in your work. Can you speak about how you approach this balance, and what you’re trying to hold or lose in the process?

My paintings unfolds over time, through both movement and time. Most of the time, I begin by painting a diluted background which I let dry, and then I gradually add layers. I usually don’t have a fixed idea of what an image will become; rather, I remain open to what might happen, to change. I sketch directly onto the canvas, these first lines guide the composition. Because of this, many possible images appear during the process, but not all of them remain in the final work.

There are elements in my work that form a beginning and that I later cover up, even if I like them; others I keep, and they become the foundation of the final result. Within this process, a timeline opens up in which there is a continuous movement of appearance and disappearance.

I constantly ask myself what to leave, what to cover, what to emphasise. This is a methodology that I don’t only apply to what happens on the canvas, but also to the concepts of my work. I would say that the way of painting and the concept are inseparable and constantly influence each other: sometimes an idea shapes the process, and other times the process changes the idea.

I’ve worked with the human figure for many years, but I always think about it in relation to its surroundings. The figure and the background influence each other; they can’t really exist separately. As the painting develops, some elements become more defined while others fade away, and this shifting balance is central to the work.

There is a strong sensitivity to colour and atmosphere in your work. How do you think about colour, is it something intuitive, emotional, and does that change over time?

My relationship with color has changed over time. Sometimes it’s an intuitive decision, made quickly; other times it’s more controlled and deliberate, and part of the overall concept.

A few years ago I moved to Fulleda, a small village in Lleida, and the landscape there has influenced my palette. The colors shift with the seasons, and without really planning it, these changes have entered my work. Green, for example, has started to appear more strongly since I’ve been there.

I also use color to create contrast or to flatten an image: sometimes introducing brighter tones or deeper blacks. Since my practice is an ongoing exploration of painting, I’m constantly adjusting how I use it. For me, color is what makes painting more complex than drawing, even though drawing remains the foundation. I don’t think of color individually (blue, yellow, green, red), but in groupings (blue-yellow, green-red).

In the past year, I’ve been thinking about color through form. I’ve discovered that both form and color can guide the image. A color, like a line, is also a presence: it brings weight and temperature, almost a kind of memory.

Your compositions feel both controlled and open, as if they are still shifting while being resolved. It feels like there’s a before and after in your works, like frames in a bigger story. Is there ever a finished work in that way?

I think about composition through drawing. It’s the foundation of my work. I’m not interested in clean lines, instead I work with continuous, intuitive lines, and I allow for mistakes and changes. Often, several lines define the same body, and I keep them visible so the figure feels open and unresolved. At the same time, I choose certain elements to define more clearly.

This balance between what is open and what is fixed creates a tension that feels essential to painting. I want to hold onto a moment, but also let it keep moving within the image. Because of that, a painting never feels completely finished; it simply reaches a point where it stops asking something of me.

There is a sense of “before” and “after,” but not as a linear story. Instead, different moments exist together in the same image. The painting holds both decisions that are already made and possibilities that are still there.

Finishing a work is, in a way, a form of letting go. It means choosing not to continue, even though other possibilities still exist; and in some way, they remain present in the painting.

Your work carries a certain dreamlike logic, where familiar elements seem to shift or behave in unexpected ways. Do you feel connected to surrealist ways of thinking, and how does that influence the way images appear in your paintings?

Over time, I have made many paintings that originate from images I have dreamed. I’m interested in how dreams work; how they tell stories without following a clear or logical structure.

In dreams, things don’t need to make sense. They shift, transform, and exist without explanation. That kind of freedom feels very close to painting.

I don’t feel directly connected to Surrealism as a movement, but I relate to the idea of the image as a space where different realities can exist together. I’m drawn to images that don’t fully explain themselves, and that create a sense of something slightly unfamiliar or unresolved.

The emotional space of my work moves between inside and outside, between painting and life, and between dream and reality. Because of that, images often appear in a fragmented way, more like memories or impressions than fixed representations.

To what extent are your works rooted in observation versus memory or imagination? Do you begin from something seen, or does the image develop entirely within the act of painting?

Memory and imagination are closely connected, and I think observation is what activates them. There are different ways of observing.

Sometimes I start from something I’ve seen: a body, a gesture, a landscape, but it doesn’t stay the same. It changes through memory, time, and the process of painting. Other times, there isn’t a clear reference, but that doesn’t mean there is no observation, it just becomes more internal and less defined. I also pay attention to what happens within the painting itself as it develops.

In the end, the eye and the hand are my main tools. I’m interested in the space where an image is no longer exactly what was seen, but not entirely invented either.

For me, painting is a place where these three dimensions, observation, memory, and imagination constantly merge. And it is within the act of painting itself that the image takes form: not so much as the execution of a prior idea, but as a discovery.