Re-imagined

David Foster Wallace, After Bacon's Pope Innocent X, after Velasquez. Charcoal on paper, 42x60"

I've always thought it's important to revisit things. Feelings, subjects, themes etc. Especially when it comes to my creative process. The riches of a subject are rarely exhausted by one visit or experience. We as viewers/creators change as well, which guarantees a novel encounter with the other. We never really see the same thing twice. If what we see has a soul, then we never see it with our eyes. We see an ever changing body and presumably don't encounter a soul unchanged by it's own experience the second time around. If I see a mountain one minute it is changed the next instant. It has gained parts or lost them. In light of this, is there anything that ensures the continuity of such a mountain? Is there an essence to such things? 

My most recent act of re-visitation was my drawing of DFW above, inspired by two classic works below. Velasquez executed the painting below on the left around 1650. It is of Pope Innocent X. Later, Francis Bacon, a 20th century painter, copied this master-work in his own grotesque and evocative style, seen below to the right. I learned about both of these works/artists in college. I became and remain an admirer of both and now find myself situated in an artistic lineage wherein the younger artist pays homage to the earlier by reinterpreting his work. That's what I've tried to do in my drawing. In creating this work, I honor both Bacon and Velasquez and keep my memory of David Foster Wallace alive.