Figures at Night 1962

Patrick Procktor made "Figures at Night" with paint, and it's all about process, you can see the hand of the artist everywhere. The blue is the star here, isn't it? It feels almost like a stage, and the figures are actors caught in a mysterious drama. You can see Procktor’s marks, thick and thin, all over the canvas. Look at the way he's used the red lines, they act like a kind of scaffolding, pinning the figures in their places, but also making them float, you know? The painting feels unfinished, like Procktor was more interested in the act of painting than in some final, polished product. It reminds me of some of Francis Bacon's figure paintings, where the body seems to be dissolving and reforming at the same time. Art's about embracing that kind of ambiguity, right?