Before I came to work at The Meadville Tribune and began to really focus on developing my photography and story - telling, I was a student of drawing and painting. I drew and painted every day for more than four years as I worked toward getting my degrees. I began painting rally seriously in 1988. It was around that time I first saw a Francis Bacon painting. It was of hanging meat. Another image was of a pope that was actually a rendition of a famous Velasquez painting( I forget which Pope). I was struck by how each picture looked sort of the same. It took me years to sort of understand how Bacon's work could influence or even help me, I just liked them. Once I saw how his layering of color and softnesses of tone could be used(however ineptly) to help me convey some passages in my painting I was hooked on his work. I got to thinking about Bacon tonight after seeing this reflection of diving Villa Maria girls basketball player in the gym floor of Meadville Area High School. I was also thinking about some of the landscape painters of the late 1800's and early 1900's and I also though a little bit about Hans Hoffman for some reason. Anyway...I thought it was a cool image after I cropped out the player(whose face wasn't quite sharp enough or interesting enough to keep whole) and turned if 90 degree counter-clockwise. Photograph by Richard Sayer