PSYCHEDELIC,  a show of mixed media paintings.

1/11/2013 - 2/16/2013
Packer Shopfs Gallery
942 W. Lake St.  Chicago, IL 60607
(312) 226-8984

"Bruce Riley is an alchemist.  It's an overused term in abstract painting but in this case it's true.  Using experimental techniques for creating the paintings for his current show, Riley plans his paintings, but along the way he wrangles the accidents and mistakes that are inevitable. In the studio he focuses on flow allowing immediate observation to guide a painting's progress. He keeps everything fresh within his daily routine by working on multiple works which inform and feed on each other. He cannot say what it is that tips a painting in one direction or the other. It's just apparent to him when something is done. The process is a living thing that's of the moment.  The recent paintings have a psychedelic, organic sculptural feel about them. They are process-driven, relying on chance as much as intent. And chemical interactions within the paint are always welcome. Riley paints for himself, but if the viewers were to forget themselves while looking at these pieces, they would be as close as one can get to an understandable meaning."

Aron Packer



Bruce Riley  2010
Miller Gallery, Cincinnati, OH
June 11th - 25th

" I'm absolutely blown away by your work!  I stood before a made thing that was not as if made but moved as if it organically grew from a small cluster (glob) of paint.  Growth, organic movement.  I got the same feeling as when , years ago, I came around a corner in Barcelona, and Gaudi's incredible Sagrada Famiglia was suddenly there growing out of the earth like a nucleus of mushrooms that outgrew their mushroomness to become, in Gaudi's making, a Cathedral.  This showing at the Miller Galery hit me like that, as if you've learned from every direction your art has taken you -- even the mistakes -- to now with sure hand let something emerge as seemingly spontaneously as it is carefully and meticulously executed.  Bravo! "
Murray Bodo, Franciscan and author of  Mystics: Ten Who Show Us the Ways of God