Winter Palace

After a trip to Egypt in 1979/80 the artist began a series of stripe paintings with related colours she had seen in the tombs there. Winter Palace takes its name from the old Winter Palace hotel in Luxor where Riley stayed. The painting illustrates a change to a different concern in which the artist has used a deliberate simulated music structure to create harmonies, using contrasting chords of colour moving across the surface. Just as in her earlier optical pictures, a vibrant surface is created with vertical bands causing the eye constantly to refocus, moving forward and back in space as one colour then another asserts a pull.