Painting is a science pursued as an enquiry into the laws of nature...Observation is considered the key to natural science. Bridget Riley More Quotes by Bridget Riley More Quotes From Bridget Riley For me nature is not landscape, but the dynamism of visual forces, an event rather than an appearance. These forces can only be tackled by treating color and form as ultimate identities, freeing them from all descriptive or functional roles. Bridget Riley events color identity As the artist picks his way along, rejecting and accepting as he goes, certain patterns of enquiry emerge. Bridget Riley enquiry patterns artist Focusing isn't just an optical activity; it is also a mental one. Bridget Riley activity focus An artist's failures are as valuable as his successes: by misjudging one thing he conforms something else, even if at the time he does not know what that something else is. Bridget Riley failure artist doe I never make studies from nature. They would get in the way. I make use of my mind. Bridget Riley use mind way If you can allow colour to breathe, to occupy its own space, to play its own game in its unstable way, it's wanton behaviour, so to speak. It is promiscuous like nothing. Bridget Riley space games play I work on two levels. I occupy my conscious mind with things to do, lines to draw, movements to organize, rhythms to invent. In fact, I keep myself occupied. But that allows other things to happen which I'm not controlling... the more I exercise my conscious mind, the more open the other things may find that they can come through. Bridget Riley mind exercise two The word 'paradox' has always had a kind of magic for me, and I think my pictures have a paradoxical quality, a paradox of chaos and order in one. Bridget Riley magic order thinking It is important that the painting can be inhabited, so that the mind's eye, or the eye's mind, can move about it credibly. Bridget Riley eye mind moving The eye can travel over the surface in a way parallel to the way it moves over nature. It should feel caressed and soothed, experience frictions and ruptures, glide and drift. One moment, there will be nothing to look at and the next second the canvas seems to refill, to be crowded with visual events. Bridget Riley events eye moving I learned from Seurat this important thing about colour and light, that 'a light' can be built from colour. I learned a great deal about interaction, that 'a blue' in different parts will play all sorts of different roles. Bridget Riley light play blue For me nature is not landscape, but the dynamism of visual forces. Bridget Riley visuals landscape force It seems the deeper, truer personality of the artist only emerges in the making of decisions... in refusing and accepting, changing and revising. Bridget Riley choices artist personality The actual basis of colour is instability. Once you accept that in lieu of something which is stable, which is form, you are dealing with something which is unstable in its basic character, you begin to get a way of dealing with it. Bridget Riley accepting character way Painting is, I think, inevitably an archaic activity and one that depends on spiritual values. Bridget Riley painting spiritual thinking In general, my paintings are multifocal. You can't call it unfocused space, but not being fixed to a single focus is very much of our time. Bridget Riley painting focus space In my earlier paintings, I wanted the space between the picture plane and the spectator to be active. It was in that space, paradoxically, the painting 'took place.' Then, little by little, and to some extent deliberately, I made it go the other way, opening up an interior space... so that there was a layered, shallow depth. Bridget Riley opening-up space way There was a time when meanings were focused and reality could be fixed; when that sort of belief disappeared, things became uncertain and open to interpretation. Bridget Riley interpretation belief reality I work with nature, although in completely new terms. Bridget Riley term I used to build up to sensation, accumulating tension until it released a perceptual experience Bridget Riley sensations tension used
