Riley Fold

In *Riley Fold*, Bridget distills a quiet drama into the simple, charged gesture of a fold—where surface becomes structure and light becomes a medium in its own right. Suggesting paper, fabric, or metal without settling into a single material truth, the work plays with illusion and tactility, inviting close looking as edges sharpen and soften across the composition.

Bridget’s controlled transitions and nuanced tonal modulation create a sense of tension between concealment and revelation, as if the image is mid-transformation. The piece resonates as a contemporary meditation on perception: how minimal shifts in plane and shadow can recalibrate space, mood, and meaning.

Bridget Louise Riley CH CBE (born 24 April 1931) is an English painter known for her singular op art paintings. She lives and works in London, Cornwall and the Vaucluse in France.

Riley was born at Norwood, London, the daughter of a businessman. Her childhood was spent in Cornwall and Lincolnshire. She studied at Goldsmiths’ College from 1949 to 1952, and at the Royal College of Art from 1952 to 1955. She began painting figure subjects in a semi- impressionist manner, then changed to pointillism around 1958, mainly producing landscapes . In 1960 she evolved a style in which she explored the d…