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Hi. I am Audrey Riley, a mixed-media artist living in the United States. My work is heavily influenced by a career in the advertising business. Because I use words and pictures through which to get an idea communicated, a lot of my art is deemed conceptual. And abstract. Ideas are my subject matter vs. something physical.
Letterforms are geometric shapes that can be understood as abstract and concrete at the same time. They are abstract in their pure form but concrete when recognized as symbols that make words. I explore this phenomenon between the visual and the verbal in my current work. The art and mind of Edward Ruscha is my greatest influence. He got a kick out of the idea of “a word leaving its body and coming back as a word again.” I experienced this phenomenon when I was in the advertising business and did a lot of proofreading. At many points, the words I read lost their meanings; I experienced them purely as abstract shapes on a page. This experience was sublime! I seek to re-experience that phenomenon and to share that rare moment when we loosen our hold on the need to label everything. I hold a BA degree in graphic design and fine art and an MA in studio art. I have owned an advertising agency and have been an adjunct professor at the university level teaching two-dimensional composition and illustration. I love lifetime learners, high achievers, working inside the box, accountability, cats, language, grids, process, Ed Ruscha, Lee Bontecou, René Magritte, Ryan McGinness, Aero Saarinen, Frank Lloyd Wright, Robert Irwin, On Kawara, Tara Donovan, J.C. Leyendecker, Antonio, George Stavrinos, signage, letterpress, libraries, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, this poem by Mary Oliver, this poem by Charles Bukowski, this quote, free markets, people who do what they say they will do, and honoring the interests of the smallest minority on earth; the individual. |
