Hannah Rothschild visits the studio of painter Frank Auerbach on the occasion of the upcoming exhibition Raw Truth Auerbach − Rembrandt at Ordovas Gallery, London, on view from October 4 – December 1, 2013. 

Asked about when a picture is finished Auerbach responds: "I want everything in the painting to work, that is, every force, every plane, every direction to relate to every other direction in the painting – so there’s no paradiddle or blot somewhere. I feel very strongly that if a painting is going to work, it has to work before you have a chance to read it. Great Rembrandts shake you. There is a tension between unity and difference; one great wave or wind holding it all together as one. A [good] painting concentrates the experience of being."