Self Portrait 1980

This is a self portrait by John Bratby, and it's all about the paint, the materiality of it. Thick, bold strokes, it's like he's wrestling with the medium, trying to capture something raw and immediate. Look at the way he's rendered his face, green and red, not trying to be realistic, but digging deeper into something else. The texture is incredible, you can almost feel the impasto, the ridges of the paint, like a topographical map of his emotions. Then there’s the confident, almost haphazard way he’s constructed the background, that heavy, blue brushwork. The area around the eyes is particularly intense. The way he’s built up the paint, it’s like he’s trying to see into himself, to excavate something hidden. Bratby reminds me a little of the early work of Frank Auerbach, that same commitment to process, that willingness to embrace imperfection and ambiguity. It’s a reminder that art is always a conversation, a dialogue across time and space.