Jean and Susan 1956

John Bratby made this painting, Jean and Susan, with some kind of oil paint. You can tell that the artist starts with a kind of drawing in paint. The colors are layered in such a way that they mix optically, especially in the lower sections of the canvas where it is possible to discern separate touches of paint; blues, reds, and creams. It looks like he used a brush loaded with a good quantity of paint to sculpt the forms. Look at the way the artist has painted the faces of the two figures in the foreground, there are furious scribbles of red that border on the grotesque. Bratby shares a similar approach to other artists such as Auerbach, Kossoff, and Uglow in the School of London. These artists embrace ambiguity and multiple interpretations over fixed or definitive meanings.