Man at a Washbasin 1990

Francis Bacon made this painting of a Man at a Washbasin with oil paint and pastel. Look at that bent over figure, kind of caught in a moment of privacy, maybe even distress. You can see the marks he made, the smudges and erasures. Imagine Bacon in his studio, wrestling with the image, trying to capture something about the human condition, about vulnerability and the body. His marks aren’t just descriptive, they’re expressive, they convey a sense of anxiety, a kind of raw emotion, like he’s digging under the surface of things. There’s a tension between the fleshy tones of the figure and the stark, almost clinical setting. The way he smears and distorts the figure reminds me of other painters like Soutine. Artists keep having this conversation across time. Painting for me is about process and letting things emerge, you have to get your hands dirty.