Painting 1946

Francis Bacon made this painting with oil, likely on canvas, and the colours are pretty raw – fleshy pinks bumping up against charcoal blacks. It's like he’s wrestling with something, smearing and scraping to find the image. I imagine Bacon, cigarette in mouth, pacing around, maybe fuelled by coffee or something stronger. You can almost feel his frustration and energy. He’s searching for an answer, layering paint, destroying what was there before. The guy under the umbrella, is he hiding, or is he revealing? The raw meat hanging behind—is it about death, or is it about life stripped bare? There’s a dialogue with painters like Velázquez, but twisted through Bacon’s own dark lens. Painters are magpies, stealing and transforming ideas. Bacon takes something old, something borrowed, and makes it brutally new. And the conversation continues. Painting is never really finished, is it?