A Carlisle City Councillor with Jean and David Bratby 1955

John Bratby, a British artist, painted this scene of civic life with oils, using a palette knife and thick impasto. It’s a domestic interior, but the presence of the Carlisle City Councillor introduces a political element. I’m just imagining Bratby there, layering the paint, capturing the texture of the clothing, the newspaper, that old-fashioned heater. The paint is really thick, you can almost feel the weight of it. I wonder if he was thinking about Van Gogh, another painter who used thick paint to convey emotion. The faces are what really grab me, though. They’re so expressive, so full of life. He hasn’t made them conventionally beautiful but that’s what is so captivating about them. Painters have always looked to each other for inspiration, for new ways of seeing and feeling. This painting is part of that ongoing conversation, a testament to the power of paint to capture the complexity of human experience.