Bridget Riley Quotes

I work with nature, although in completely new terms.

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.

As a painter today you have to work without that essential platform. But if one does not deceive oneself and accepts this lack of certainty, other things may come into play.

I couldn’t get near what I wanted through seeing, recognizing and recreating, so I stood the problem on its head. I started studying squares, rectangles, triangles and the sensations they give rise to It is untrue that my work depends on any literary impulse or has any illustrative intention. The marks on the canvas are sole and essential agents in a series of relationships which form the structure of the painting.

Painting is, I think, inevitably an archaic activity and one that depends on spiritual values.

I think this lack of a center has something to do with the loss of certainties that Christianity had to offer

For me nature is not landscape, but the dynamism of visual forces.

Focusing isn't just an optical activity; it is also a mental one.

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

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.

In my earlier paintings, I wanted the space between the picture plane and the spectator to be active.

I used to build up to sensation, accumulating tension until it released a perceptual experience

An artist's early work is inevitably made up of a mixture of tendencies and interests, some of which are compatible and some of which are in conflict

As the artist picks his way along, rejecting and accepting as he goes, certain patterns of enquiry emerge.

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.

Painters have always needed a sort of veil upon which they can focus their attention. It's as though the more fully the consciousness is absorbed, the greater the freedom of the spirit behind

I never make studies from nature. They would get in the way. I make use of my mind.