Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon

"Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends."

"[voice over] I watch him while he's sleeping. A prisoner of dreams. Fighting the battle he's always going to lose. But I'm powerless to help him as I'm powerless to help myself. So I watch and wait."

"[voice over] Submitting entirely to the service and pleasure of the dominant partner. This I find a catharsis, in that all responsibility is relinquished, every move is dictated. No decisions are your own, who exists solely for the service and pleasure of another man."

"[voice over] What mad misfortunes make his eyes blaze with despair? I dream of some tough lover. Big as the Universe, his body blemished by shadows. He'll crush me, naked, in gloomy bars between his golden thighs. A mundane yob transformed into an archangel. Is my lover to be my assassin? Or I his? Loneliness - my only true companion - will always rival any lover. Its greedy desire... always drive a wedge between me and any contender for my company. And I question myself; do I possess some inner destructive demon?"

"[voice over] This painful inability to sustain relationships. The selfishness my work demands leaves no room for an emotional self. Can tenderness ultimately only manifest itself in the motion of a brush? Even this remains invisible. The visceral reach, running fingertips along the curved notches of a spine. The line of a femur, the curl of tendon into muscle. The smell. To violate, to desecrate, to examine a person from the inside, eroticizing the white shirt cuff glimpsed beneath a dark suit. The girth, the solids, the sack of flesh, just offal bags. Ruminating intestines. Fine wines filled and swilled with rich food, trying to create some distance between myself and some dead lover."

"Study for a portrait of Francis Bacon."

"Derek Jacobi - Francis Bacon"

"Daniel Craig - George Dyer"

"Tilda Swinton - Muriel Belcher"

"Anne Lambton - Isabel Rawsthorne"

"Adrian Scarborough - Daniel Farson"

"Karl Johnson - John Deakin"

"Annabel Brooks - Henrietta Moraes"