By Abbas Hussain, October 16 2025—
The government of Alberta recognizes distinguished and emerging artists in Alberta through the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Awards Foundation. The award for distinguished artists is given every other year with up to three potential recipients. This award includes $30,000 and most importantly a two-week residency at The Banff Centre Leighton Artists Colony. Among the many distinguished artists who won the award this year and previous years, visual and multimedia artist Rita McKeogh was awarded. In an interview with the Gauntlet, McKeogh shares her story and what it means to win this award.
“It’s pretty darn exciting. [There are] so many amazing artists in Alberta and Canada that any time you get an opportunity to get an award like this, which allows you to continue on with your artwork, get further support. It’s amazing and an honour,” said McKeogh.
McKeogh shares how she got started in the world of art.
“I had inspiring professors, high school and family and just seeing amazing artwork and being inspired by it. [It] convinced me that it was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” said McKeogh.
When it comes to her roots in the art and culture world, she talked about how influential her experience volunteering at Cora Radio, now called Radio Radio, was.
“It was so exciting because I learned so much technically about audio and had so many amazing people around me that were teaching me how to do things and also encouraging me to make sure that the radio station was representing alternative voices,” said McKeogh.
“I’ve played in a lot of amazing bands. The bands are all about speaking your mind and don’t fall asleep. Like [be aware] of the things that are around us, that are not good, they’re problematic or not acceptable.”
She credits radio and playing in bands as being hugely inspirational in her work.
Some of her most influential pieces are in Bocca al lupo, which is a feminist opera performed across Canada with seventeen women. Her newer work focuses on the damage from resource extraction that is being done to the environment. She says part of the artwork is to look at it from a different perspective, that being through the animals and plants. This new focus has been captured in her piece titled, darkness is as deep as the darkness is.
Another one of her pieces is called tender, which is a piece that talks about the commercialization of slaughtering cows for consumption. It depicts a plethora of beds with sausages lying underneath the sheet in the foreground and a picture of a herd of cows in the background, as if to say cows belong asleep in bed, as sausages to be eaten by human beings.
More about Rita McKeogh and her art can be found on her website.
