Bridget Riley and the pleasure of looking
Lily Le Brun | The Observer | 22nd November 2025
At the venerable age of 94, Riley is still painting. An “elegant” survey demonstrates she is still coming up with eye-deceiving abstractions that add to an already large “alphabet” of such work. Yet this prompts the question is this new work really new? Riley’s response is that she is trying to replicate the feeling of looking at nature. One work, consisting of triangles, evokes the sensation of waves lapping on the shore. How does she do that asks one writer? “I can’t stop looking”.