

Ray Reviews: Francis Bacon at the Tate, Liverpool
Previous to attending this exhibition, I had only ever seen two original Bacons at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. This was also my first time in Liverpool but that's a different story. This particular show has been curated extremely well; there is a broad range of the different seasons in Bacon's work and there is a good mix of the recognisable 'hit singles' like the Three Figures at a Crucifixion to a good few I had never seen before (35 very large canvases


Vodou and Vagueness
Now and then people will ask me where my name comes from. My vague but honest answer is 'Voodoo'. Ray is of course short for Raymond and that is indeed the handle my folks gave me but the surname is a little less obvious. Around ten years ago I found myself at that point in life of being post-education (Cumbria Institute of the Arts, Carlisle in my case) and quite sure of what I wanted to do in life (paint and be a rock star, easy!) but I was also broke, stuck in a small town