"When I paint, my energy is focused on winning, squeezing every drop of life out of my existence."
A s a visual poet of violence, Lincoln Townley’s figurative paintings capture the darker side of the human experience and apprehend it within recognizable gestures and a menacing palette. Having participated in the 2019 Venice Biennale, with exhibitions in New York City, London, Los Angeles, Berlin, and Singapore, the highly successful self-represented artist creates looming images of the foulest gradients of our soul. His ability to capture the darkness of his sitters has made him a portraitist of several celebrities such as Al Pacino, John Cleese and Russel Brand, while still working in parallel collections that encompass the experience of contemporary malice. After having found solace in the work of artists like Francis Bacon and Edvard Munch, his art continues to reclaim the experience of confrontation and doubt, as when looking into a stained reflection, unsure—and scared—if what we just saw is indeed our own spectral image.
Art © The Estate of Francis Bacon / DACS London 2022 / ARS New York 2022
Image © Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
In Dance with the Devil (2020) a man is connected to a parallel entity composed of a smoke-like texture, which stands as a spectrum to his own existence. Attached to this double by way of his upper limbs, the main figure stands distorted while remaining recognizable as an anthropomorphic being through his fully rendered core. The figures appear to skirt the limits between existence and decay, while being immersed in a crimson prism reminiscent of the polychromy applied by Francis Bacon in his 1962 triptych, Three Studies for a Crucifixion (see fig. 1). In a cube composed of red, orange and black, Townley’s figures seem to participate in a phantasmagorical dance while waiting for the scene to achieve absolute darkness.
Lincoln Townley worked in nightclubs entertaining bankers and financiers on nights out in London’s Soho into the early hours from 2005 to 2010. Townley was completely consumed by his environment, this lead to him painting the clients he looked after and hiding these pictures under his bed in his small flat Old Compton Street, ashamed of the images which were emerging. In 2012, Townley exploded on the art scene with his works which are fueled with his fascination with what successful and powerful people are willing to go through to succeed.
