“The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, of fear and pleasure; it’s a little like making love, the physical act of love.”

Francis Bacon
Study After Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X
1953
Oil on canvas
60 × 46 in