Tuesday (2026): Promises Are Kept on Ordinary Days
Nothing is being celebrated here. No wedding, no anniversary, no birthday — just an ordinary Tuesday, and two heads resting against each other, so close that their outlines run into one another.
He turns his eyes towards her. She looks straight at you, calm and a little amused, as if she had noticed you a moment ago and decided you were welcome to stay.
A condition, not a story
Tuesday does not tell you who these two are, how long they have known each other or what happens next. It shows a state: closeness without an occasion, two people leaning into each other on a day nobody will remember.
The most ordinary day of the week
Monday has its reputation, Friday has its promise, the weekend has everything else. Tuesday has nothing. It is the day no one plans a party for and no one takes photographs on — which is exactly why it was chosen as the title.
The god of promises
Tuesday carries the name of Tiw, or Týr, the old Germanic god of oaths and promises, who once placed his own hand in the mouth of a wolf as a pledge that he would keep his word. Big promises are made on Saturdays, in front of guests and cameras. They are kept on Tuesdays, when no one is watching, in a thousand small ways that never make it into a photo album.
This painting is that photograph. And her look at you is not a question but a quiet confirmation: the promise holds, week after week — and you are welcome to be its witness.
Freedom below, precision above
The picture is built in two separate moves. First the ground: the black and white at the left, the broad emerald field at the right, the glowing red and orange mass beneath the two heads, laid in with coarse, broad brushstrokes that settle nothing precisely. Then the drawing, on top of that ground: the eyes, noses and red mouths, the flaring hair, and one long ultramarine line that runs from the top edge down between the two faces and belongs to both of them at once. 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.
An architect’s scale
At 150 × 200 cm the two heads are far larger than life. Bertermann, who holds a Master’s degree in Architecture, uses that scale so that you do not observe the couple from a distance — you stand directly in front of her gaze, close enough to be the third person in the room.
Made by a real person — not AI
Like every work in the studio, Tuesday is an original, one-of-a-kind painting, made by hand by a real person, not AI. The running colour, the flaring hair, the two faces drawn in a few sure 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.
Tuesday, 2026. Acrylic and oil stick on canvas, 150 × 200 cm (height × width). Signed on the front and the back. Part of the figurative works.
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.