Intervals 3 (blue/green)

As the title indicates, blue and green form the outer edges of every block, with lilac and rose-brown held between them. What changes is the direction of the sequence: the first and fourth blocks run from green at the top to blue at the base, while the others are reversed. This simple inversion is enough to unsettle any sense of regular repetition, and the eye moves back and forth between the blocks comparing one with the next.

The white intervals that give the work its title act as pauses, allowing each block to be read on its own before the eye continues down the sheet. Because the four hues are close in tone, the boundaries between stripes are soft and the colours appear to tint one another. Intervals 3 follows Intervals 2 (2019) and draws on the stripe format Riley has explored since the late 1960s. Where earlier stripe works such as Serpentine rely on saturated contrasts, the Intervals prints work with a restrained, closely related palette.