Vis and Ramin 2018

Jenny Saville made "Vis and Ramin" with oil paint. She is one of the great painters of our time and I love the way she is always pushing the boundaries of figurative painting. You can see the pinks and flesh tones of the figures, built up through layers of brushstrokes. The paint is thick, juicy, and you can see the physical act of painting itself. The red lines sort of scrawled over the composition add an abstract layer on top of the figures. I feel she might have been thinking about the way bodies occupy space, how they press against each other, and how identity gets constructed through relationships. Saville might be in conversation with artists like Francis Bacon, or maybe even Picasso, reinterpreting their ideas about figuration through a contemporary lens. For me, painting is a way to explore the complexities of our human experience. It's not about fixed meanings but about embracing ambiguity and uncertainty.