Francis Bacon - The Portraits :: Visual Arts Paintings Art

Francis Bacon - The Portraits Francis Bacon was born in Dublin, Ireland to English parents. When F. Bacon grow up and was more independent he then travelled to Berlin were he spent most of his time there. He then moved onto Paris, before returning to London and starting out as an interior designer. Bacon never attended art school; he only began his work in watercolours about 1926 – 27. An exhibition of works by Pablo Picasso inspired him to make his first drawings and paintings. The influence of the biomorphic figures in Picasso’s work is apparent in Bacons first major painting of his mature period ‘Three Studies for Figures’ at the base of a Crucifixion 1944. This painting is also representative of some of Bacon’s methods and subjects. The Portraits influenced me because in my project ‘Journey’s’ I am looking at car crashes and what things lead to car crashes e.g. Drink driving. I wanted to see how drink affects the brain and how the brain reacts to the effects. As Bacon in this particular painting of this, distorted image of a face, I thought this would be a great image to use in my project. Using this image would help me to see what people, who drink drive, see while they are driving. So using this distorted image it showed me how incontrollable people are when drink driving. The image provides strong movement due to the harsh sweeps of paint. In the painting I noticed how Bacon used basic elements to give a distinctive image. He has used a thick paint brush and he probably only did about 15 brush strokes. The composition of the study is life-like and has made sure that he includes every detail of the face. By having the face on an angle and the thick brush strokes it shows me that this person maybe scared or has just seen some object that is distracting him, also it looks like he moved his face with some rapid force. Each of the colours contrasts well and gives a representation of a face. The shapes used in the composition of the painting are mostly round or even sphere shape. Bacon has used a lot of texture in the paint to show the different elements, e.g. the thick white brush stroke represents the cheekbone and the dark stroke for under the chin. The process of the painting that Bacon has gone through were sketching out the outline of the face and the facial features then I imagine he took the brush and with some force started to map out the face while