Naked woman on a sofa 1985

This is Lucian Freud's "Naked woman on a sofa", painted with oils. You can tell the artist has really looked, and looked hard. There's a sense of the woman sinking into the sofa. Her flesh is rendered with such fleshy and unflinching honesty. I can imagine him spending hours looking at her body, thinking hard how to capture it on canvas. The paint is laid on thickly, capturing every lump and curve, every shadow and highlight. It's kind of incredible. Each brushstroke feels deliberate, like Freud is trying to say something important about what it means to be human. The colours, these earthy pinks and browns, make it so intimate, so real. For me, the best painters are those that are in conversation with one another across time. Freud takes something from the old masters, but he also pushes it somewhere new, creating a language all of his own. What results from this is an artwork of real presence.