Study for Portrait 1977

Francis Bacon’s *Study for Portrait* is an oil painting made at an unknown date. Bacon's mark-making feels intuitive, like he's wrestling with the paint to capture something fleeting. The color palette is unsettling, fleshy pinks and bruised purples against stark black, mirroring the emotional intensity of the subject. The texture is thick in places, thin in others, revealing the physicality of the medium. You can almost feel the push and pull of the brushstrokes, particularly around the face, where the paint is smeared and manipulated as if to distort and rebuild the features simultaneously. Take a look at the shadow of the figure. The way it bleeds and merges into the pink ground feels so psychologically charged, like the weight of the sitter’s own psyche bearing down on them. Bacon reminds me of Goya, both artists grappling with the darker sides of human existence. But, ultimately, art is an ongoing dialogue, a space where ambiguity thrives and fixed meanings dissolve.