Page 23 - Studio International - July 1966

drawings are studies, a testing ground for the validity of tic forms and elements are like Racine's alexandrine;
the visual conceptions. So to speak, they discover the they serve the exposure and intensification of emotion;
artist's themes; they are thematic meditations that yield they elevate the discourse through disciplining it.
finally the perfected subjects of her paintings—those More often than not, this artist is concerned with some
paintings where every distraction has been eliminated fundamental of seeing. A series of drawings may grow
and where the emphasis falls upon the congruence of from the imagined oscillation of a circle; certain of the
ends and means. planes described by its swing will be recorded to form
both the design and process of the event. A circle ex-
The drawings are not blueprints. Their function is to pressed as concentric bands of black will be 'disfigured'
define by exploring. Characteristically, they are in series. by a dislocation of plane that stretches and contracts
Observation of some visual phenomenon in the physical the bands; the circular movement will nevertheless con-
world, one with a distinct emotional coefficient, is likely tinue to assert itself over the broken form.
to stimulate the artist to understand it, to control and Often, Miss Riley plays one system off against another.
recast it. This requires both the analysis of its mechanism An important series of drawings (a number of paintings
as a visual event and of its affective potential, by way of have now been done) studied the changes effected by
variation. stepped tonal intervals played against undulating bands
The technique is to reduce the observation to sets of in an asymmetrical rhythm.
terms in the artist's personal visual vocabulary; these are A large part of Miss Riley's work makes its points by
then manipulated so as to disclose their structural rela- way of rhythms visualized. These are syncopated,
tionships and the developed feelings consistent with extended, accelerated, interrupted, slowed. Sometimes
these. In another formulation, the artist may derive or they seem to be the equivalents of bodily impulses, re-
invent form, as it were, out of feeling. flecting at a remove the tensions and energies in the
I don't want to make Miss Riley's procedures seem beholder. But also they seem to refer to the natural
cold. The objectivity they possess is that of method, but world apart from man, to environment as a primary
that's as far as it goes. The simplicity and standardness source of feeling.
of the visual elements she uses in her explorations are a There are likely to be many Riley drawings to a rela-
foil to feeling, not a denial of it. Miss Riley's characteris- tively small number of paintings. The drawings are notes.
They indicate the problems the artist uncovers in pursuit
of the subject. They are the method whereby ends and
Right
Study for disfigured circle 1963 means are brought together. They are apt to show the
Ink and paper collage whole formal attack, the value assigned to the intervals,
22 1/8 x 30 in. the system of variation, the way in which an underlying
Robert Fraser Gallery
linear pattern or rhythm (invisible perhaps in the subse-
quent painting, if there is one) supports an overt struc-
ture of shapes. The drawings are apt to carry notes: 'Add
extra square horizontally in black-grey instead of white-
Below left
Study for blaze 1962 grey' ; 'All angles as acute as possible' ; 'too heavy, less
Ink and paper collage curve'. These injunctions serve the authority of the
231 x 22 in. paintings.
Robert Fraser Gallery
Despite the fact that they are made for further work, the
Below right drawings have an aesthetic interest of their own. It is of a
Untitled No. VI different order, of course, than that of the paintings. They
Ink
27 x 10 in. reflect an aesthetic of emergence; the satisfaction they
Robert Fraser Gallery offer us is their powerful potential. They express an
effort towards resolution, whereas the paintings conceal
their means and offer us only the devastating confronta-
tion of their autonomous visual processes.
Miss Riley's work is carefully planned and much a
matter of figuring things out. It consistently applies
method and calculation, but it owes its strength as much
to imagination as to measure. The artist has an intuition
of effective pattern; it remains to create it. There is no
easy road to these drawings and paintings. When the
artist conceives a logical system that fails to work as
expected, she corrects it with art. She fools the eye, con-
founds the ruler, and behaves with all the arbitrariness
that artists are noted for.
The paintings come directly from the drawings, but
they, too, have their elements of inventiveness. q