Janis Law on her detective, Francis Bacon
Just in time for the publication of her new Francis Bacon novel, Moon Over Tangier, Janice Law is at Janet Rudolph's
blog talking about the interests that led her to create the detective:
With Francis, my somewhat reluctant detective of Fires of London and the Lambda award winning The Prisoner of the Riviera, I’ve gotten to indulge one of my passions– painting. I drew quite well long before I could read, and only a colossal lack of confidence kept me from majoring in art and embarking on a different sort of La Vie Boheme than writing.
I never gave up the brushes, and after I retired from teaching, I began filling up the barn with paintings.
So when I first thought of using Francis, inspired by the Anglo-Irish artist Francis Bacon, one of the positives was that he was a painter, whose art was the chief stabilizing force in a rackety existence. In the great era of abstraction, Bacon swam upstream with grotesquely distorted and vigorously brushed figurative work, immortalizing his friends and lovers, and in his screaming popes, wrestlers, and animals, revealing a peculiar and passionate nature.
You can read the whole interview here; for more information about Janice Law, check out her author page.
