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Riley’s prints are a fascinating lens through which to examine the continuing evolution of her style. Certain phases of her painting have not carried across much to her graphic work; the rhomboid motif that occupied her canvases between 1986 and 1997 only resulted in two prints, for example. At other times, printmaking has been a valuable method for refining the ideas expressed in her paintings.
In 1997 she began to introduce a curvilinear element to her work, a theme that took a further two years to fully develop. These images expressed a sense of raucous movement and rhythm that might have become uncontrollable had Riley not sought to slow them down by expanding the scale and volume of the motif. In prints such as ‘Start’ the artist gives the energy of the original idea free rein. They represent a small, contained fragment of the wild.
