Mirror 1966

Frank Bowling's ‘Mirror’ is an intriguing space rendered in muted, earthy colours and some odd decorative features. I imagine the artist working on this piece, layering washes of paint, scraping back, and adding more, building the image through intuition and impulse. I wonder, what was Bowling thinking as he was laying down those checkerboard tiles? Does that stairway really turn in on itself like that? I like how he's used thin paint, so it has this uncanny feeling, almost ghostlike, like you can see through one space to another. The figures give it a surreal dimension, caught in the act of ascending or descending. It reminds me a bit of some of Francis Bacon's interiors, that same sense of being trapped in a weird domestic drama. Ultimately, artists build upon what they know, and on each other's experiments; it’s like one long conversation happening in a big studio with people shouting across time! And that’s the beauty of painting, isn’t it? It's always open to interpretation.