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

Categorized in : Way Space Opening Up

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 a science pursued as an enquiry into the laws of nature...Observation is considered the key to natural science.

Bridget Riley

enquiry keys law

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

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