Study for a Portrait 1978

Francis Bacon made this Study for a Portrait with oil on canvas, and what grabs me is the way he's wrestling with the paint. You can almost feel the struggle he had trying to pin down a likeness, or perhaps something deeper. The colors are fleshy, bruised even, smudged into each other, like he's searching for the right balance, the right form. The shadow engulfing half the face isn't just dark, it’s a physical thing, a presence. Look at the mouth – it’s not a mouth so much as a raw, vulnerable gash. You can see the marks of the brushstrokes, like scars on the canvas. Each stroke feels like a question, a reconsideration. Bacon reminds me of artists like Jenny Saville, who also aren't afraid to look at the body in unflinching ways. Art like this embraces ambiguity, the unresolved, the questions rather than the answers.