The Pulse of Colour: Bridget Riley & The Art of Looking

Written By Therena Baptista Medeiros

“If you can allow colour to breathe, to occupy its own space, to play its own game in its unstable way, it’s wanton behaviour…it is promiscuous like nothing.”
 – Bridget Riley

Colour is free, unrestrained, and interacts with its surroundings in an unpredictable manner. It can blend, contrast, and shift in ways that are not confined or restricted, much like how promiscuity implies freedom from limitations or boundaries, embodying the liberated nature in Bridget Riley’s artwork.

Imagine standing before an artwork, your eyes flickering across a canvas as colours ripple and pulse. This is the hypnotic realm of Bridget Riley, an artist whose masterful interplay of colour and form evokes a dynamic visual symphony. Often linked to the “Optical (Op) Art” movement, Riley’s work invites us to explore the essence of seeing, or the “art of looking.” 

The artworks of Bridget Riley deliver a distinctive and active visual experience prompted by her use of juxtaposing form, tone, and colour. Although Riley is often linked to the “Op Art” movement, she personally resists this label. 

Unlike many of her contemporaries within the Abstraction movement, Riley’s materials are not the medium of expression; instead, she emphasises form and the image’s ability to alter the viewer’s perception. Her work is a dance of contrasts, where colour and form collaborate to create optical stimuli. 

Figure 1: Bridget Riley in her Warwick Road Studio, London, early 1960s

Photo by Jorge Lewinski, Private Collection
Image Credit: The Morgan Library & Museum

Bridget Riley was born in Norwood, South London, on 24 April 1931, and she continues to make waves in the art world to this day. 

Her father was a printmaker with his own business, first in London and then relocated to Lincolnshire in 1938. During World War II, her father was drafted into service, prompting Riley, her mother, sister, and aunt to evacuate to Cornwall in 1939. 

Drawing and painting became integral to Riley’s life from a young age. She attended Goldsmiths College from 1949 to 1952 and the Royal College of Art from 1952 to 1955. Her studies focused primarily on drawing from life and mastering the nuances of black-and-white imagery. 

In various interviews, Riley has recounted the challenges she faced during her formal education. She found the teaching and guidance rather “unrewarding,” which spurred her to develop her own unique style. 

Figure 2: Cover of Exhibition Catalogue The Responsive Eye, 1965, MoMA, New York 

Image Credit: MoMA 

Riley’s breakthrough came in 1965 when she participated in the renowned exhibition, “The Responsive Eye,” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This pivotal event solidified her reputation and launched her illustrious career. 

Figure 3: Current, 1964, synthetic emulsion on board, 148.1 x 149.3 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York © Bridget Riley

Image Credit: Yale Center for British Art

Her artwork, Current (1965), was one of the pieces featured in the exhibition and on the cover of the catalogue. It is a seminal work in the Op Art movement, characterised by its seismic lines that flow like electrical currents, rippling and oscillating as the viewer gazes upon it, moves around it, or changes their perspective. Curator William Seitz described it as “bombarding the eyes with pure energy.” 

However, due to the success of the exhibition and the popularity of Riley’s artworks, her designs created a phenomenon in a time where copyright was not inherently protected or respected. Riley recounts that she felt uneasy about the commercialisation of her work without her consent during the peak of the movement in the 1960s, which made it difficult for her art to be taken seriously for a few years. One can imagine the struggle and frustration women artists have endured within the art world to be taken as seriously as their male counterparts, especially when directly associated with what was essentially a fashion trend based on a woman’s artwork without her permission. 

“The Pleasures of Sight”: Nature & Its Paradox

In her renowned essay, “The Pleasures of Sight” (1984), Bridget Riley reflects on the profound influence her time in Cornwall had on her artistic sensibility. Cornwall let Riley gain a feeling of freedom in prolonged looking, as she embraced the countryside landscape. 

In a BBC interview from 2021, she explains that, because she was not attending school whilst living in Cornwall, “There was [...] nothing to do but look, enjoy, appreciate, move around, and walk around in the extraordinarily beautiful landscape,” allowing her to prioritise the sense of looking and absorb any environment she is in at any given moment. Her time in Cornwall revealed the multifaceted nature of colour, enriching and elevating her artistic vision.

Nature, however, is not Riley’s subject. Her works are derived from nature in its spontaneity, not its representation, resemblance, or its literal depiction. She believes it is futile and impossible in trying to convey and control the object of seeing, as it would lose its “purity and freshness.” The longer one observes nature, the more fleeting forms reveal themselves, each pattern uniquely emerging. As Riley puts it, “sometimes in a mere glance one can see more than in the close scrutiny of a thousand details.”  

Riley’s art parallels nature through its equivalence, metaphor, and recognition. Her work does not depict nature in the traditional sense but instead celebrates the fundamental and natural human experience of sight. The “pleasures of sight” occur when our visual perception “throws our innermost heart to the furthest extension of that which surrounds us.” In her work, nature becomes an active force, a memory, or a sensation rather than a mere appearance, embodying the paradox of nature: an ever-changing constant.

Riley & Seurat

During her studies at Goldsmiths College and the Royal College of Art, Riley grappled with the concept of colour in her artistic practice.

Riley often recounts in multiple interviews the profound influence the French Impressionist painter, Georges Seurat (1859-1891), had on her perception of colour and form. Seurat is known for developing the artistic style and techniques of Pointillism, which involved placing small dots of pure colour to create luminous images through optical blending. His work, steeped in the colour theories of his time, emphasised the viewer’s active role in perceiving colour. This meticulous approach resonated with Riley, inspiring her own exploration of his artistic technique, attested in two of her essays she published on Seurat: “The Artist’s Eye: Seurat” (1992) and “Seurat as Mentor” (2007). 

Figure 4: Georges Seurat, Bathers at Asnières, 1884, oil on Canvas, 201 x 300 cm, National Gallery, London
Image Credit: The National Gallery, London

Riley fondly recalls her fascination with Seurat’s painting, The Bathers at Asnières (1884), which captivated her during frequent visits to the National Gallery in London. She vividly describes how light seemed to caress the canvas, revealing the sublime beauty of colour. Seurat’s innovative approach recognised the observer as an active participant, making perception the medium itself. Riley felt a deep connection with Seurat’s love of contrast. Unlike Seurat, however, Riley did not rely on scientific theories or methods; her interest lay in intuition and the pure, experiential nature of colour. 

Figure 5: Copy after ‘Le Pont de Courbevoie’ by Georges Seurat, 1959, oil on canvas, 71 x 91 cm, Hayward Gallery, London © Bridget Riley
Image Credit: Hayward Gallery & Frieze

To understand Seurat’s methodical use of colour and tone, Riley undertook a series of impressionistic studies. One such work, Copy after ‘Le Pont de Courbevoie’ by Georges Seurat (1956), was based on a reproduction of Seurat’s original Le Pont de Courbevoie (1886-7), as she found the original too intimidating to face directly. Riley adhered to Seurat’s use of a diluted yellow ochre ground, diverging from other Impressionists who typically employed canvas “alla prima.” While faithful to the composition, Riley took liberties with the palette and techniques. Riley’s painting appears bright as she takes advantage of how the colour yellow captures the play of light adjacent to the tones of blue and green. Riley wanted to “follow his train of thought,” but utilised larger brushstrokes which created more noticeable dots. Her aim was to explore the movement of colour blending within the painting, rather than merely mimicking Seurat’s pigment mixtures and application.

Figure 6: Pink Landscape, 1960, acrylic on linen, 101.5 x 101.5 cm, Private Collection © Bridget Riley
Image Credit: Sotheby’s

Pink Landscape (1960) marked the culmination of Riley's impressionist series, based solely on her understanding of Seurat’s use of colour, tone, and contrast. The painting, a vivid memory of a scorching day in Sienna during her 1959 summer travels in Italy, was brought to life upon her return to London. According to Riley, the heat in Sienna was so intense and the volume of dazzling light completely consumed her, and the most important thing to her was to try to recreate the powerful sensation on canvas. She sought to illustrate the light and heat by applying dabs of pink, blue, yellow, orange, and green to convey the contrasts, without adhering to a consistent pattern. Despite bordering on abstraction, the work remained representational. 

Riley later described Pink Landscape as a partial failure, feeling she did not truly communicate the intense experience she had in Sienna. She believed that imposing a preconceived method onto the artwork inhibited the image and perception projected from the canvas. 

This realisation led her to temporarily abandon colour, shifting her focus to exploring pictorial elements in the 1960s, and experimenting with composition, rhythm, volume, and movement to produce visual sensations. Through this process, Riley uncovered new dimensions of artistic expression, concentrating on the inherent energies within the artwork rather than its subject matter. 

Black & White Era

Riley’s black-and-white artworks exemplify vibrancy that extend far beyond colour; it encompasses the energy with which an image is conveyed. These pieces are not vibrant in the traditional idea of bright hues, but rather in how they engulf and captivate the viewer’s attention entirely. In this context, vibrancy signifies the infusion of life and energy, not just through colour but through movement and resonance. 

The relationship between black and white are the foundation of how we perceive contrasts, highlighting the distinction between light and dark. Shades like black and white can be defined as “non-colours” or achromatic, meaning they lack hue and saturation but act as neutral elements that enhance our perception. Without these fundamental non-colours, our ability to discern tones and highlights would be diminished. Black and white are not just the absence of colour; they are powerful tools that Riley uses to create movement, depth, and optical illusions. These non-colours become a canvas for her exploration of perception, encouraging the audience to feel comfortable with prolonged looking.

Figure 7: Movement of Squares, 1961, synthetic emulsion on board, 34.1 x 26.8 cm, Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London © Bridget Riley
Image Credit: Yale Center for British Art

The patterns and shapes in works like Movement of Squares (1961) challenge the eye, creating a sense of motion and challenges the viewer’s perspective. This interaction is at the core of her artistic philosophy–the viewer’s experience and perception are integral to the artwork itself. By focusing on black and white, Riley strips away distractions to emphasise the pure visual impact of form and contrast. 

Movement of Squares features a grid of squares that appear to shift before one’s eyes. The precise arrangement of black and white shapes creates a lively, three-dimensional effect, drawing the viewer deeper into the composition the longer they observe. As the squares narrow and recede toward the vanishing point, the eyes are compelled to follow the subtle rotation, intensifying the sense of movement. This work exemplifies Riley’s skill in manipulating simple geometric forms to generate a fluid, complex visual experience, underscored by her academic understanding of perspective in art. 

The transition from Pink Landscape to Movement of Squares marks a dramatic jump in Riley’s work, as she temporarily steps away from colour. Her black-and-white works are just as significant and impactful as her later colour pieces, as they focus on the very essence of visual perception–how we intuitively experience forms and contrasts in the world around us. 

The Pulse of Colour

In 1967, Bridget Riley reintroduced colour into her work—not as a mere stylistic shift, but as a greater investigation into its visual power. Colour is never static; it evolves and adapts, its character shaped by what surrounds it. Riley understood this, approaching colour with precision, curiosity, and a keen awareness of its fluid nature. Easing back into colour empowered her to push the boundaries of the senses, challenging the viewer’s preconceptions of sight. 

Unlike her earlier black-and-white compositions, where movement was driven by form, Riley’s use of color introduced a new optical rhythm, one energised by the colours themselves. Art historian Robert Kudielka, a leading expert on Riley, noted that form and colour often strive for dominance, yet Riley allows colour to unfold within a controlled structure. She created a framework using repeated stripes to offer the colours space to work collaboratively without obvious interference or competition. 

Figure 8:  Late Morning, 1967-68, PVA emulsion on canvas, 226 x 359 cm., Tate Britain, London © Bridget Riley
Image Credit: Tate Britain

One of her earliest colour experiments in this style, Late Morning (1967-68), showcases this delicate balance. Vertical bands of red, green, and blue, set against a white ground, create a visual abstraction where the sequence of colours appears to expand and contract. The varying stripe widths prevent uniformity, and its large composition leaves the eye constantly searching for a focal point. Like light filtering through a curtain, the hues seem to glisten and float, their energy stretching horizontally across the canvas. The longer one looks, the more the colours seem to vibrate, reinforcing Riley’s belief that colour is never still and is always in flux. 

Figure 9: Cantus Firmus, 1972-73, acrylic paint on canvas, 241.3 x 215.9 cm, Tate Britain, London  © Bridget Riley
Image Credit: Tate Britain

After 1969, Riley started introducing blended hues to enhance the synergy of colour and perception. A prime example is Cantus Firmus (1972-73), placing together turquoise, pink, and lime-green alongside bands of black, white, and grey. Riley carefully selected these colours for their ability to merge seamlessly into the surrounding space. The crisp black bands amplify the intensity of adjacent hues, while the greys create a shifting lustre that seems to ebb and flow as the eyes move toward the center of the canvas. 

The title, a musical term meaning “fixed melody,” reflects the painting’s compositional rhythm. Like notes on a score, Riley’s colours unfold across the surface, guiding the eye in a measured yet unpredictable progression. The wider irregular stripe widths, echoing those of Late Morning, ensure that no single colour dominates, preventing the composition from settling into a settled pattern. Instead, the hues exist in a state of tension, order, and chaos. 

This dynamic equilibrium, where colour both asserts itself and transforms through its relationships, would be a defining principle in Riley’s later works. Cantus Firmus exhibits her mastery of what Kudielka called “complementary contrast,” where colours, placed side by side, heighten one another’s vibrancy. By orchestrating these interactions, Riley doesn’t just depict movement; she composes it.

Evolution of Colour Dynamism

Bridget Riley's visit to Egypt in 1979-80 reinvigorated her approach to colour. Immersed in the striking landscape, she was captivated by the stark contrasts; the blazing brightness of the desert juxtaposed with the lush green banks of the Nile. She drew inspiration from the bold colours that were everywhere in Ancient Egyptian culture, from everyday life to the sacred tombs of the Pharaohs. Her art began to radiate this same vitality, reflecting the Egyptians’ reverence for life and spirit. 

The ancient tomb paintings, with their remarkable purity of colour, left a lasting impression on her. This revelation led Riley to reconsider colour structure, culminating in what she termed “Free Colour Organisation,” a method she has continued to explore ever since. Each colour element is carefully positioned in relation to correspondence, contrast, and proportion. Her experience in Egypt gave rise to what is now known as her “Egyptian palette,” an exciting expansion embracing more luminous hues that exude warmth and intensity. 

Figure 10: Vein, 1985, oil on canvas, 171.8 x 142.9 cm, Collection of Albright-Knox Gallery, New York © Bridget Riley 

Image Credit: Yale Center for British Art

Riley infused her newfound palette into her composition of strict vertical stripe arrangement, reminiscent of her previous series. Works like Vein (1983) feature vertical bands in ochre, turquoise, coral, yellow, green, blue, and pink, evoking the sensation of heat, light, and shadow she observed in Egypt. 

Riley momentarily forgoes the black and white variants, permitting the colours to play and contrast directly against one another. The stripes, all of equal width, envelop the viewer in a sunrise-like experience, where light dances on the desert, the greens of the Nile, and the water’s reflection. This abstract piece lets colours exist in a realistic and active incarnation while working together, mirroring nature’s paradox of harmony and disruption coexisting. 

Figure 11: Nataraja, 1993, oil on canvas, 165.1 x 227.7 cm, Tate Britain, London © Bridget Riley

Image Credit: Tate Britain 

Expanding on the vertical stripe motif in the 1980s, Riley began exploring diagonal forms, incorporating rhomboid shapes arranged in various colours and tones in her “free colour organisation” method. Geometric compositions such as High Sky 1 (1991) and Nataraja (1993) a colourful homage to her 1960s works simulate a magnified abstraction of Seurat’s pointillism, as if zooming in on his application of colour in a pixelated appearance. While viewers may initially try to discern figures or patterns reminiscent of familiar artistic techniques like pointillism, it is crucial to remember that Riley’s true subject is not the direct representation of nature, but rather the existence and perception of color within natural forces.

High Sky 1 (1991) captures the vast nature of the sky through a meticulous play of colour, replacing stripes for an arrangement of rhomboids and parallelograms. These shapes ripple across the canvas, recalling the movement of light and shadow through the sky. The colours–pinks, reds, greens, blues, ochres, purples–interact with black and white accents scattered across the painting’s surface. The diagonal flow of these shapes, combined with Riley’s Egyptian palette, imitates the natural forces of the atmosphere, creating a palpable energy that propels the eye across the canvas and allows one to feel both the scale and perpetual motion of the sky itself.

Amid the colourful tumult, the stark contrasts of black and white provide a sense of grounding. These details offer essential moments of balance while amplifying the surrounding tones. Black and white become structural anchors, suggesting both the stillness of the sky’s infinite space and the sharp clarity of daylight. Alongside the vivid colours, they establish a dialogue between light and dark, stability and movement. The rhythmic arrangement of rhomboids creates an impression of upward movement, as if drawing the viewer towards the heavens, caught in a celestial dance of colour. 

Figure 12: Rêvre, 1999, oil on canvas, 228 x 238 cm, Courtesy of Artist and Yale Center for British Art © Bridget Riley
Image Credit: Yale Center for British Art

Riley’s more contemporary and mature style takes on a distinctive curvilinear identity, a culmination of her lifelong study of perception and colour. The artworks in this series are awe-inspiring, appearing as fluid brushstrokes sweeping across the surface whilst still occasionally incorporating structured lines. Rêve (1999) and Enchant (2004) introduced this new phase in Riley’s pictorial evolution.

“When played through a series of arabesques, the curve is wonderfully fluid, supple and strong. It can twist and bend, flow and sway, sometimes with the diagonal, sometimes against, so that the tempo is either accelerated or held back, delayed.” –Bridget Riley

Figure 14: Enchant, 2004, oil on canvas, 193 x 457 cm, Dia Art Foundation, New York © Bridget Riley.
Image Credit: Yale Center for British Art

Enchant (2004) does precisely what its title suggests. The composition is mesmerising, its delicately lustrous hues of pink, blue, turquoise, purple, and green interweaving in a state of weightlessness like sheer pieces of tissue paper. The colours undulate upon the surface, radiating a hypnotic energy that evokes both sinuous motion and serenity. Unlike the rigid geometric structures that define much of her oeuvre, here, the forms glide effortlessly, dissolving into one another with a dreamlike fluidity. Regardless of the forms and lines Riley employs, she maintains this psychedelic effect, rendering the painting less of an image to be passively observed and more of an experience to be felt, absorbed, and inhabited. With Enchant, Riley affirms her mastery of perceptual abstraction, demonstrating that even in her later career, she continues to push the boundaries of visual sensation. 

By harnessing the fundamental instability of colour, Bridget Riley turns painting into an active experience rather than a passive image. Colour is a language of its own, one that transcends representation and directly engages one’s perception. She frees colour from traditional constraints, imbuing it with a pulsing rhythm that feels intrinsically alive

She has spent nearly eight decades exploring the balance between the rigid precision of logic and the instinctive force of intuition, seamlessly shifting between these realms. Her work stands as a testament to human growth, reflecting the evolving ways in which we perceive and understand the world. Possessing a feeling of the infinite, her paintings retain their quiet permanence, their allure undiminished by time—forever fresh, forever alive, continuously captivating and redefining the way we see.

Sources

Batchelor, David, ed. Colour: Documents of Contemporary Art. London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2008.

BBC, and Kirsty Wark. “Bridget Riley - Painting the Line.” Www.bbc.co.uk, November 19, 2021 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0011psx/bridget-riley-painting-the-line.

Carraher, Ronald G, and Jacqueline B Thurston. Optical Illusions and the Visual Arts. New York: Reinhold Pub. Corp, 1980.

Chassey, Éric de. “The Trialogical Paintings of Bridget Riley.” In Bridget Riley, edited by Michael Bracewell. Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2019.

Follin, Frances. Embodied Visions : Bridget Riley, Op Art and the Sixties. London: Thames & Hudson, 2004.

Hayward Gallery. Bridget Riley. Edited by Michael Bracewell. Edinburgh: National Galleries Scotland, 2019.

Kudielka, Robert. “Into Colour: Bridget Riley in Conversation with Robert Kudielka, 1978.” In Bridget Riley: Paintings 1963-2001, edited by Doro Globus. Edinburgh: National Galleries Scotland, 2016.

Johns, Richard. “Riley in Cairo: British Art and Egypt in the 1980s,” Art History, Volume 45, Issue 3, June 2022, Pages 650–672, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8365.12656.

Martin, Courtney J., ed. Bridget Riley: Perceptual Abstraction. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale Center for British Art, 2022 https://bridget-riley.publications.britishart.yale.edu/.

Riley,  Bridget,  “Pleasures of Sight.” In Bridget Riley, edited by Michael Bracewell. Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2019.

Riley, Bridget, “Seurat as Mentor (2007).” In Bridget Riley, edited by Michael Bracewell.

Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2019.

Therena Baptista Medeiros
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