"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"
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Riley is describing a paradox every working artist recognizes: constraint as a route to release. The “veil” isn’t a romantic metaphor for mystery so much as a practical device - a surface, a system, a problem set - that can absorb the mind’s fidgety need to interfere. In her case, that veil is famously optical: stripes, curves, repeated units that demand total attention to interval, vibration, and edge. You lock your gaze onto the grid so the self can stop narrating.
The subtext is a quiet rebuke to the popular idea of artistic freedom as pure self-expression. Riley suggests the opposite: the more “fully the consciousness is absorbed” by the discipline of looking and making, the less room there is for ego, anxiety, and premature meaning. Absorption becomes an ethic. It’s not escapism; it’s a way to get out of the way.
Context matters because Riley’s Op Art sits at the crossroads of sensation and structure, often misread as decorative trickery. She reframes that work as a serious psychological technology. The “freedom of the spirit behind” points to what her paintings do to viewers, too: they occupy the eye so completely that ordinary perception loosens its grip. The veil is both shield and instrument - something that filters distraction while intensifying experience. In an era that prizes instant opinion, Riley is defending the slow, almost monastic attentiveness that makes real seeing possible.
The subtext is a quiet rebuke to the popular idea of artistic freedom as pure self-expression. Riley suggests the opposite: the more “fully the consciousness is absorbed” by the discipline of looking and making, the less room there is for ego, anxiety, and premature meaning. Absorption becomes an ethic. It’s not escapism; it’s a way to get out of the way.
Context matters because Riley’s Op Art sits at the crossroads of sensation and structure, often misread as decorative trickery. She reframes that work as a serious psychological technology. The “freedom of the spirit behind” points to what her paintings do to viewers, too: they occupy the eye so completely that ordinary perception loosens its grip. The veil is both shield and instrument - something that filters distraction while intensifying experience. In an era that prizes instant opinion, Riley is defending the slow, almost monastic attentiveness that makes real seeing possible.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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