Overcome 2022

Martine Johanna made this portrait, Overcome, seemingly working with soft pastel and some kind of charcoal. The powdery softness of the strokes blends into an image that is almost hyper-real, a sort of digital-analog hybrid. The thing that gets me about this piece is the flesh tones. Johanna lays these incredibly delicate oranges and reds over what seems to be a grey underpainting. This gives the figure's skin an eerie, almost feverish glow, like she's on the verge of some kind of transformation. Note the blue lips! It’s not quite right, this colour—an uncanny touch that pushes the work beyond pure representation. There's a connection to be made here with someone like Lisa Yuskavage, who also plays with these weird, luminous flesh tones to create figures that are both alluring and unsettling. Ultimately, Johanna shows us that a painting doesn't have to be photorealistic to be true, it just has to feel true. And this one definitely does.