Charlotte Higgins interviews painter Bridget Riley, winner of the 2012 Sikkens Prize.

Riley recalls that her start as an abstract painter came from her dissatisfaction with rendering the landscape from observation. She told Higgins: "So I decided to start again to find a new beginning – to start from the themes themselves, that is to say, shapes, lines, and so on. That led to my making a black-and-white painting and seeing what it would do: and it moved… Movement, shimmering, sparkling and reflecting … all those things that happen in landscape.' "

Sikkens Prize 2012: Bridget Riley is on view at the Gemeentemseum, The Hague, The Netherlands, through January 6, 2013.