I work on what’s called the given form. If you look at forms, they’re extremely, in a sense, unrepresentational. One of the things I’ve always tried to analyze is why it is that, if the formation of the image that you want is done irrationally, it seems to come from the nervous system much more strongly than if you knew how you could do it. Why is it possible to make the reality of an appearance more violently in this way than by doing it rationally? Perhaps it’s that, if the making is more instinctive, the image is more immediate.

(From Interviews with Francis Bacon, David Sylvester)