The mystery of appearance

I've been reading this excellent book of interviews with the painter Francis Bacon, and there's something he says about images that I think should be the absolute core of the DFOS brand and the right mindset for the post-AI image world.

BACON: What personally I would like to do would be make portraits which were portraits but came out of things which really had nothing to do with what is called the illustrational facts of the image; they would be made differently, and yet they would give the appearance. To me, the mystery of painting is how can appearance be made. I know it can be illustrated. I know it can be photographed. But how can this thing be made so that you catch the mystery of appearance within the mystery of the making?

INTERVIEWER: Could one put it like this? That you're trying to make an image of appearance that is conditioned as little as possible by the accepted standards of what appearance is.

BACON: That's a very good way of putting it. The whole questioning of what appearance is. I'm always trying through chance or accident to find a way by which appearance can be there but remade out of other shapes.

Key lines:

"How can this thing be made so that you catch the mystery of appearance within the mystery of the making?"

"Make an image of appearance that is conditioned as little as possible by the accepted standards of what appearance is"

How can you express the mystery of the appearance while using as little accepted standards of the appearance as possible?

What a great brief for expressing ourselves...