Francis Bacon. Three Studies of the Male Back, 1970 

"The way I try to bring appearance about makes one question all the time what appearance is at all. The longer you work, the more the mystery deepens of what appearance is, or how can what is called appearance be made in another medium. And it needs a sort of moment of magic to coagulate colour and form so that it gets the equivalent of appearance, the appearance that you see at any moment, because so-called appearance is only riveted for one moment as that appearance. In a second you may blink your eyes or turn your head slightly, and you look again and the appearance has changed. I mean, appearance is like a continuously floating thing."

-Francis Bacon, in conversation with David Sylvester

What's madness but nobility of soul

At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!

I know the purity of pure despair,

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,

That place among the rocks—is it a cave,

Or winding path? The edge is what I have . . .

-Theodore Roethke, "In a Dark Time"