Bridget Riley

Art Lab No#1

It’s Sunday night and I scooping up thoughts. The garden for the weekend was a passing glance as I walked up the path to and from the house. Family was visiting, they were my focus. In the delight of it all my mind drifted elsewhere. It nervously circled around ideas that I have been quietly peculating on over the month. I hope they have formed something that when spoken allowed makes sense to another mind, perhaps yours? Shall I share and see where it takes us. To give background, I have joined an art group called The Art Lab. It is a global group of mainly photographers who each a month research an artist and then we create something that is inspired or is connected to the artist work. This is my first run and it was great. The artist was Bridget Riley, a 1960’s pop artist. Naturally I wanted to feature flowers or the garden somehow but I was presented with an artist whose work is abstracted in shape and form so I must admit I was super curious at the start of the month to figure out where this was going to land. It didn’t seem like an obvious connection - abstract art and flowers but the more I learnt about Bridget the more I connected to the motion and colour in her work and what I see in the garden.

There is something delicious about discovering a new artist - I love the research and making a connection, the curiosity of it and the questioning. For me I liked the challenge of learning, exploring and digging deeper to find a connect to this artist which seemed worlds away from my garden at the bottom of Aotearoa, NZ. Would I be able to find a thread to pull that would lead to something I could create? After the initially snuffle around on the internet, the reading of the course materials and then the simple google search “Bridget Riley flowers” followed by the first class zoom call and I could see ideas forming shape. Bridget created a work called Roses -so she liked flowers and had capture the movement, sensation & colour of the rose. I can relate to that and then I found her words and I think that was when I kinda fell hard. To read artist thoughts and expression as they create I always find so much inspiration, connection, expression, guidance. I collected scrapes of paper and scribbled notes on colour, shape and light and sensation. The sensation of walk in nature. Ideas began to form.

All the while as I collected and connected, dahlias where fading and I wanted to captured those last few beauties of the season. The shapes spoke to me in a language that felt like Bridget talked and whilst I had lofty dreams of wanting to replicate and create I knew for the moment time and talent meant an annotation of these thoughts. Keep it simple and so I did. Many photos over many days of blur and shape and movement as the dahlia’s picked form the garden shift in shape and colour. I was capturing them as they faded out for the season. I thought of the word extreme which a class mate mentioned as there source of inspiration and I added the idea of observation, stillness which spoke to another. It was vast becoming a well of inspiration and I was delighting in staring deep into the pool of it.

And then there was the simple joy of realising it was all connected, Bridget’s words, my class mates words and what I was creating and it was filling my soul in a deep way (note I wrote soil instead of soul which I think fits as well). I stretched out the colours when editing, I layered up the images to make lines and curves of petals and colour. I made a gallery to hold in your hand so you focused on what to look at. I made a wonky film to show how it works. I nervously shared with my class mates (and you) and felt satisfied regardless of the response. It was an exploration in play and learning and connecting, all things that are vital to living a life well.

With much love

Mel