I really enjoyed the exhibition today, and wrote down a few bits and pieces in my note pad, as insights into Bacon ......"you think my paintings are brutal? What of the world"...."I think artists stay much closer to their childhood than other people. They remain far more constant to those early sensations"..."why go to art school and learn from failed artists" ....Writing or talking about painting was for him only ever an approximation as - "painting is its own language and is not translatable into words." He said that the "sitter is someone of flesh and blood and what has to be caught is their emanation" and that he "wanted to paint mouths like Monet painted waterlilies." His studio, where he lived and worked for over 30 years, was described as "fragile and old, it's mutation into something other, as it moved towards decrepitude." He was obsessed by the futility and brevity of existence - "I think of life as meaningless but we give it meaning during our existence."The "study for figure 6" I did blind.
