I am not particularly interested in portraiture, which is what Lucian Freud focuses on, but the Lightbox is a great local gallery that has free entry to anyone under 21, so I thought that I would check it out. Freud’s work was interesting to me as it focuses a lot on the human body, which isn’t a topic that usually interests me in art, but the exhibition was also about other artists and their view of the human body and a bit about Freud’s personal life and the artists that he surrounded himself with during that time. There was a volunteer there that knew quite a lot about the work and Freud which was great and I found the talk with him particularly interesting. I learnt that Freud had 11 children in total with a multitude of different women, and that after his death there had been a fight over the money. We also talked about the different artists that were represented in the gallery. I had a fun time talking to him as he was very knowledgeable about the exhibition and the wider knowledge surrounding Freud. 

I enjoyed the second section of the exhibition more, as the room was split into two with Freud’s works on one side and other artists’ work that also focused on an interest in the human condition, but in a different sense, there were artists such as Somaya Critchlow who focused on what she called “psychological landscapes” in her work, with an ongoing dialogue about women exploring the female body and how it is portrayed. 

I also really liked some of the more abstract paintings in the second section of the exhibition such as a painting by Keith Critchlow which used long strokes of a paintbrush to create an almost blurry portrait of a person. I enjoyed the way that the portrait seemed to blur the edges of the human figure. I don’t usually enjoy portraiture, however, this particular piece of art was intriguing to me as it wasn’t structured and precise like a normal portrait it felt chaotic and like a vague inclination of the human form. I found it fascinating.