Study for a Portrait 1978

This is Francis Bacon’s “Study for a Portrait,” and the colors here are all about flesh, bone, and shadow. I can imagine Bacon working on this, smearing and wiping, building up a face from almost nothing. It’s like he’s wrestling with the paint to find a form. I wonder what he was thinking about when he made this? Was he thinking about Velazquez, or those classical sculptures he loved, or was he just trying to capture something fleeting, like a grimace or a wince? The paint is applied so thinly, in layers and layers. Look how he’s dragged the brush across the surface, creating these subtle textures that give the face a kind of rawness. That dark shadow, like a bruise, cuts across the face, obscuring and revealing at the same time. Bacon’s always in dialogue with other artists, twisting and turning their ideas into something totally his own. Painting's like a conversation, always building on what’s come before, and Bacon’s definitely adding his own voice to the mix.