the witness Drawing

The Geology of the SubconsciousThe gaze of this young woman that is so intense we lower our eyes; the haunting familiarity of her face, conjured up athousand times in the mind's eye, and different each time; the sensuality of her figure, whose chiaroscuro traits lingeras beauty and desire tug for possession of the viewer's mind: all these go to make up Bertrand Neuman's world, aworld we enter with that curiosity mingled with mild misgivings that assail us when we visit a portrait gallery. Memoriesare awakened, feelings aroused, intimate moments rekindled, forgotten faces flash back. Like "vanities", those paintingsof another age, the portrait brings home the painful message that all is transient and destined to fade.Contemporary artists usually paint portraits only occasionally. For Bertrand Neuman, portraying the human face hasbeen the abiding concern ever since he started painting. "For me," he says, "the portrait is the very architecture of life."His fascination with the human figure focuses on the face's infinite variability and he draws his inspiration from theinexhaustible well of emotions it holds and generates. In it one can feel the throb of life and sense the subconsciousbreaking to the surface, now expressed, now repressed. That is why Neuman's portraits are often divided into twodistinct sections dominated by shadow and by light. This recurring structure works on the alternating pattern ofrevealed and concealed elements. In architecture, the succession of revealed elements and shaded areas, most simplyexpressed in the colonnade, gives the structure rhythm by a process as old as civilisation. The eye first picks out thoseforeground elements on which the light falls. What lies in the shadow is perceived later as the beholder gradually takesin the overall complexity of the picture.The faces that fill Bertrand Neuman's canvases express this duality in manifold ways, and all the more boldly and consummatelyas the artist dominates his art. Where his hand is sure, the artist's mind can express itself without constraint.And even where he fumbles to express an idea before finding the right way, his hand and mind are in tune at each phaseof the act of creation. As well as calling on the subtle interplay of light and shade, he works by applying layer upon layerof paint. When he works in oils, the face emerges slowly as each layer is added.