Bridget Riley

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

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.

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.

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

His 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.

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.

I work with nature, although in completely new terms.

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.

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

Focusing isn’t just an optical activity, it is also a mental one.

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