Bridget Riley Quotations

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.

I work with nature, although in completely new terms.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.