Artist Quotes by Francis Bacon

We only have our nervous system to paint.

— Francis Bacon

If you can talk about it, why paint it?

— Francis Bacon

Art is man added to Nature.

— Francis Bacon

I regret not starting to paint earlier...It is one of the few things I do regret.

— Francis Bacon

An artist must learn to be nourished by his passions and by his despairs.

— Francis Bacon

Everybody has his own interpretation of a painting he sees.

— Francis Bacon

It's always hopeless to talk about painting - one never does anything but talk around it.

— Francis Bacon

When I paint I am ageless, I just have the pleasure or the difficulty of painting.

— Francis Bacon

Painting is the pattern of one's own nervous system being projected on canvas.

— Francis Bacon

You could say that I have no inspiration, that I only need to paint.

— Francis Bacon

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

— Francis Bacon

I have to hope that my instincts will do the right thing, because I can't erase what I have done. And if…

— Francis Bacon

All artists are vain, they long to be recognized and to leave something to posterity. They want to be loved, and at…

— Francis Bacon

Images also help me find and realise ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from…

— Francis Bacon

Velazquez found the perfect balance between the ideal illustration which he was required to produce, and the overwhelming emotion he aroused in…

— Francis Bacon

All painting is an accident. But it's also not an accident, because one must select what part of the accident one chooses…

— Francis Bacon

I should have been, I don't know, a con-man, a robber or a prostitute. But it was vanity that made me choose…

— Francis Bacon

Painting today is pure intuition and luck and taking advantage of what happens when you splash the stuff down.

— Francis Bacon

Some paint comes across directly onto the nervous system and other paint tells you the story in a long diatribe through the…

— Francis Bacon

Great art is deeply ordered. Even if within the order there may be enormously instinctive and accidental things, nevertheless they come out…

— Francis Bacon

If I go to the National Gallery and I look at one of the great paintings that excite me there, it's not…

— Francis Bacon

I want to make portraits and images. I don't know how. Out of despair, I just use paint anyway. Suddenly the things…

— Francis Bacon

I foresee it and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint.…

— Francis Bacon

I feel that I am much freer if I'm on my own, but I'm sure that there are a lot of painters…

— Francis Bacon

Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence- a reconcentration… tearing…

— Francis Bacon

Very few people have a natural feeling for painting, and so, of course, they naturally think that painting is an expression of…

— Francis Bacon

I feel ever so strongly that an artist must be nourished by his passions and his despairs. These things alter an artist…

— Francis Bacon

I think that one of the things is that, if you are going to decide to be a painter, you have got…

— Francis Bacon

Excusations, cessions, modesty itself well governed, are but arts of ostentation.

— Francis Bacon

It's such an extraordinary supple medium that you never do quite know what paint will do.

— Francis Bacon

Painting gave meaning to my life which without it would not have had

— Francis Bacon

I always think of myself not so much as a painter but as a medium for accident and chance.

— Francis Bacon

The nature of things betrays itself more readily under the vexations of art than in its natural freedom.

— Francis Bacon

I paint for myself. I don't know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy…

— Francis Bacon

Painting is a duality and abstract painting is an entirely aesthetic thing. It always remains on one level. It is only really…

— Francis Bacon

I don't think people are born artists; I think it comes from a mixture of your surroundings, the people you meet, and…

— Francis Bacon

I use all sorts of things to work with: old brooms, old sweaters, and all kinds of peculiar tools and materials... I…

— Francis Bacon

I don't believe art is available; it's rare and curious and should be completely isolated; one is more aware of its magic…

— Francis Bacon

No artist knows in his own lifetime whether what he does will be the slightest good, because it takes at least seventy-five…

— Francis Bacon

You want accuracy, but not representation. If you know how to make the figuration, it doesn't work. Anything you can make, you…

— Francis Bacon