Chicago-based artist Bruce Riley fills canvases with abstract organic forms made from layer after layer of dripped paint and poured resin. While looking at images of his work online, it’s difficult to grasp the depth and scale of each piece which can be penetrated by light from multiple angles, casting shadows deep into the artwork. Riley works using a number of experimental techniques, frequently incorporating mistakes and unexpected occurrences into the thick paintings that appear almost sculptural in nature. Bruce Riley has painted all his life. He currently has a studio in Chicago where he lives and a studio in Cincinnati where he was born. Bruce is a self taught artist with some art school training. He has no art degree. “If someone else paid for school I would go but when funding ran out I rented a studio”. Recent exhibitions include two solo shows; “Psychedelic” at Packer Shopfs Gallery, “Science Fiction” at Miller Gallery. He has also been in recent group shows at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art and at the Grand Rapids Art Museum. His numerous awards include a; Pollack-Krasner Foundation Fellowship, Ludwig Vogelstien Foundation Fellowship, Arts Midwest/NEA Regional Visual Arts Fellowship and an Illinois Arts Council Finalist Award. What do you learn about yourself from the art? How do you describe and what characterize your artwork? My art teaches me how really unimportant I am. It makes me aware of my human pettiness allowing me to see without that filter. I would describe my work as ongoing. It is an all-consuming vision that will end when I do. But until then I go into the studio and I paint without purpose. I work and I watch to see what my organism is capable of doing with the limitations that it has. Within this context an objective use of my conditioning informs the painting that exposes universal patterns of human behavior.... (Continued at http://blues.gr/profiles/blogs/interview-with-chicago-based-artist-bruce-riley-fills-canvases ) undefined

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