Francis Bacon is a fascinating character. In the corridors of time there was gossip he was Queen Elisabeth's child, a free mason, and the author of Shakespearean plays.
Who knows if any of that is true. But if one is curious Bacon has left a body of work regarding science, history, philosophy. He thought to separate philosophy from religion, which I think is a mistake. One should question whether spiritual experience is truly of God or of one's own wishes and dreams.“IT HAD been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and untruth together in few words, than in that speech, Whatsoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.
For it is most true, that a natural and secret hatred, and aversation towards society, in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue, that it should have any character at all, of the divine nature; except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man’s self, for a higher conversation: such as is found to have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen; as Epimenides the Candian, Numa the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana; and truly and really, in divers of the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the church.
But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.
The Latin adage meeteth “with it a little: Magna civitas, magna solitudo; because in a great town friends are scattered; so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighborhoods.
But we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends; without which the world is but a wilderness; and even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections, is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity.”
Excerpt From: Francis Bacon. “Delphi The Collected Works of Francis Bacon.” iBooks. ”
24 x 18, Watercolor paper 140lb, Watercolor, Gouache, Pen, and Ink, 2018
This picture was taken with my Coolpix L840 camera and the colors are more true. However, the some of my ink is reflective. I used sharpie pens for outlining Bacon's hair and the ink can reflect light unlike the prisma colored ink pens I use for fine detail work.
