Bruce Herman's "Face to Face" (a reflection)

I don’t typically go around appreciating art. However, when I walked into Bruce Herman’s “Face to Face” art exhibit in the Bryan Oliver Gallery at Whitworth this past September and saw Bruce’s father looking back at me, I knew I was in for something I hadn’t expected. This exhibit conveyed meaning more effectively than words could have.

The theme of the art exhibit was faces and what they portray. As Bruce says in the description of the exhibit, it was about conveying the “elusive quality of real presence—the internal person, not just their appearance.” Looking into the eyes of each portrait filled me with a surprising amount of feelings, many of which I couldn’t understand at first. On a technical level, many of the paintings were composed of thick paint layered on so it looked nearly three dimensional—the layers symbolic of the complexity of the human spirit, perhaps.

A couple paintings stood out to me. In the center piece of the painting entitled “The Virgin Miriam”, there is a woman (likely supposed to be Miriam). She is, unlike most of the paintings in which the subject’s face appears to be the focal point, fixated on a point not near the viewer. Strangely, this was one of the only paintings where I felt the subject was looking straight at me. She was sprawled out on the ground, peering with pleading eyes. A central theme in the exhibit was vulnerability and no subject was more vulnerable. I felt like I shouldn’t be looking at her, like I was seeing something very private. I sensed pain on multiple levels— not only physical, but a great deal of mental pain.

A different kind of vulnerability was evident in Herman’s self-portrait. It looked strangely as if Bruce was not entirely “there” during the moment captured in the painting. It reminded me of someone deep in thought or perhaps not thinking at all. Whenever we space out and someone catches us though, we immediately snap back to normal. This is because when we are lost inside or own heads, we often forget to put up the masks which we normally wear. So it is interesting that Herman decided to paint himself in this moment. Does Bruce feel as if he is always being caught with his guard down? Or does he constantly feel lost...disconnected?

Herman packed more emotion into these people’s faces than could be possible in real life. Not quite understanding how it was possible, I decided I needed to look at the paintings up close to analyze what was creating these feelings. I expected to reach out and feel something living, breathing. I found myself surprised to be observing simple brush strokes on a canvas. How could little dots of paint convey something so powerful?