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 distorting it. Bacon must have used supporting studies such as different sketches of faces and features. In my opinion I feel that Bacon worked rapidly on this painting because he wouldn’t have had the same effect as he has got, it wouldn’t have had the same feeling or textures to portray the message that the painting is putting across. Bacon would have had to have skills in composition because when distorting images free hand you need to know where facial features are.
Looking more in depth at the painting, the atmosphere that is created is silent and as there is only one face is feels lonely and sad. This painting affects me because as I am doing about car crashes and relating this face to drink driving it reminds me of my dads car crash. This painting is quiet and if Bacon had of made a brighter, vibrant background it would have made the painting noise, and disturbing. The qualities the work possesses that are causing me to respond to this painting are that it’s not like any other painting I have looked at before and it was a painting that gave me more influence and different ways to see how it relates to my work.
