Naked Portrait 1973

Lucian Freud made this oil painting, *Naked Portrait*, with the kind of determination I recognize from my own studio practice. There’s an earthy honesty in the fleshy tones, the way the light catches the skin, and how the body occupies the space. I can almost feel the weight of the model on that stark white sheet. It’s intimate but not romantic, right? The pose, the gaze, everything feels deliberately unglamorous, immediate. Freud's paintings always strike me as a kind of wrestling match with the subject. The way he builds up the paint, layer upon layer, it’s like he’s trying to capture something beyond just appearance. You can see it in the details—the texture of the skin, the way the light falls. He was an artist who wasn’t afraid to look, to really look, and that takes guts. We can all learn from that.