Daydreaming (2026) — Eyes Closed, Somewhere Else
The whole two-metre canvas holds a single moment of letting go. A head has sunk onto folded arms, the eyes are closed, the face rests in glowing orange against the dark of the hair. An oversized hand in magenta, its fingertips dipped in yellow, lies heavy in the foreground. Behind the figure, the room keeps its rhythm — horizontal stripes of blue and green, even and indifferent. The figure has left that rhythm entirely. Present in the room, drifted out of it.
A condition, not a narrative
What does she dream of? The painting refuses to say. A curled, rose-like form in pink and yellow rises against the stripes at the right — it stays deliberately unresolved, like the dream itself. Daydreaming is not a story with a before and after; it presents a condition — the moment attention lets go of its surroundings and turns inward, somewhere no one can follow. The dark field along the lower edge and the violet corner give that inwardness its weight.
Painted with a roller, drawn with an oil stick
For his figurative works, Claus Bertermann deliberately changes his physical process. The acrylic ground is applied not with brushes but with a paint roller — a tool that forces broader arm movements and reduces fine control. In Daydreaming the striped ground makes that discipline visible: band after band of blue and green, laid in broad passes, still carrying the momentum of the body.
The figure is then drawn directly with oil stick — intuitively, and independently of the painted ground. The lines do not follow the surface underneath; they cut through it: restless scribbles of green over the arms, dense reds in the hair, the heavy contour of the resting hand. This separation between rough painterly field and assertive drawing is where the painting gets its tension — the even stripes of the room against the unruly lines of the dream.
Built forward, not scraped back
Collectors who know the abstract series will recognise the difference immediately. In the abstracts, layers are applied and scraped back again — the image emerges like sediment, by removal. Daydreaming is built the opposite way: forward only. Coarse acrylic first, decisive oil stick contours on top. Nothing is taken back; every move stays.
Made by a real person — not AI
Like every work in the studio, Daydreaming is an original, one-of-a-kind painting, made by hand by a real person, not AI. The roller passes in the stripes, the breaks in the oil stick line, the small irregularities of the surface — all of it is intentional, and all of it is the record of a human body moving in front of a two-metre canvas.
Daydreaming, 2026. Acrylic and oil stick on canvas, 200 × 200 cm (height × width). Signed on the front and the back. Part of the figurative works.