Stranded on Track (2026) — The Best-Informed Man on the Circuit

The car has stopped at the side of the track. Engine failure, or a collision with a rival? We do not know.

The driver knows. He sits on the sill of his car, goggles pushed up, and looks back down the track with a piercing gaze. He has already decided what to do about it.

A condition, not a story

Stranded on Track shows no crash and no drama. It shows a man sitting still, perfectly composed, while the race goes on without him for now. His face is calm; his eyes are not.

Detail of Stranded on Track (2026) by Claus Bertermann - the driver's green face with red lips and determined eyes under a leather helmet with goggles pushed up, drawn in blue, orange and yellow oil stick

A whole race to study the track

In the 1960s a stranded driver often had to wait at the trackside until the race was over. Every other driver saw that stretch of track for a few seconds. He had a whole race to study it.

Bertermann paints him as the best-informed man on the circuit. Today's race has given him everything he needs to win the next one.

The gloves are still on

Look at his hands: the orange gloves are still on. The race is over, but he has not finished.

Detail of Stranded on Track (2026) by Claus Bertermann - the driver's orange gloves resting on his knees, surrounded by dense orange, red and yellow oil-stick lines over the black body of the car

Freedom below, precision above

The picture is built in two separate moves. First the ground: the dark sky, the green grass, the black car, the blue jacket and the pale blue and pink wheels, laid in with coarse, broad brushstrokes that settle nothing precisely. Then the drawing, on top of that ground: the helmet and goggles, the face, the orange gloves, the dense lines over the car and the outlines of the wheels. The line never sinks into the paint; it stays on top. Like every figurative work in this series, the image is built forward, never scraped back — the exact inversion of the abstract series, where surfaces are built over months and cut back into.

Part of a motor-racing cycle

Stranded on Track belongs to a group of 2026 paintings about the golden era of motor racing, together with No Halo, Eau Rouge, Parc Fermé, Pit Stop and Stranded on Track. Each canvas shows a different moment of the same world: courage, concentration and confidence.

An architect's scale

At 150 × 200 cm the driver sits close to life size, and his gaze meets the viewer directly. Bertermann, who holds a Master's degree in Architecture, uses that scale to make the painting feel like an encounter, not an illustration.

Made by a real person — not AI

Like every work in the studio, Stranded on Track is an original, one-of-a-kind painting, made by hand by a real person, not AI. The dense orange lines over the car, the running colour, the goggles drawn in a few fast strokes — all of it is intentional, and all of it is the record of a human hand working fast in front of a canvas two metres wide.

Stranded on Track, 2026. Acrylic and oil stick on canvas, 150 × 200 cm (height × width). Signed on the front and the back. Part of the figurative works.

→ View Stranded on Track in the gallery

This painting belongs to Claus Bertermann’s 2026 figurative series — large-format works in acrylic and oil stick in which the drawn layer always lies on top of the paint, never in it.