The Easel

Bridget Riley

Riley says of her own work: “One moment, there will be nothing to look at and the next second the canvas seems to refill, to be crowded with visual events.” Her favoured tools are the optical effects of patterns and the way colours jostle against each other. One critic thinks this is now passé. Really? Illusion has long been a central preoccupation of art. It’s difficult to see Riley as other than a strong contributor to that ancient tradition.