The Honesty of the Broken Face.

When I look around the gallery just now, I’m struck by how many of the faces on the walls are fractured. Not destroyed, not damaged, but deliberately broken open. These portraits don’t offer a neat likeness. They don’t behave. They don’t sit still. Instead, they reveal the truth that a face is never a single, tidy thing.

Take this ink portrait with the heavy black lines and the doubled features. Is it manic, or actually still? It has that same psychological tension you see in Francis Bacon’s work, where the face seems to shift under your gaze. When I look at it closely, the doubled features don’t feel like a stylistic choice. They feel like they want to tell you something, show you something. The eyes that don’t quite meet, the mouth holding two emotions at once, it all suggests an inner life that isn’t still. Is it a symbol of what’s going on inside? The rush of emotion, the confusion, even the flicker of fear? Or is it simply the ordinary drift of thought, the constant movement of a mind that never fully settles. I can relate. That’s what I love about it. It sits right on that line. It just shows a face in motion, carrying more than one truth or one feeling at a time.

Then there's the watercolour portrait with the angular geometry and the bursts of purple, orange and yellow. It carries a whisper of Picasso's cubist portraits but without the coldness. Picasso fractured the face to show multiple viewpoints at once. This piece does something similar, with a softness that feels more human and the look in the eyes, is that sadness? Or exhaustion? We can all relate. The colour bleeds into the lines, and I’m not sure if it’s draining out or sparking back to life. I trust it is the latter.

Another work from this collection leans into fragmentation even more boldly. The layered features, the sense of several identities sharing the same space, the almost mask like qualities. There's a slight hint of Jean Dubuffet in the rawness. This portrait feels like that, a gathering of selves rather than a single fixed identity. The many hats we wear, the faces we learn to make.

Then there is this ink drawing that looks like a scream caught midbreath. Urgent strokes. Eyes wide and unblinking. A mouth that feels both open and one closed. Wild eyes, slightly out of control. I don’t think it wants to be understood in this moment. It simply wants to be heard and felt. This sketch is more emotion than portrait, less about likeness and more about what it stirs in you, how it makes you feel.

What ties all these works together is the idea that a portrait doesn’t need to be whole to be powerful. In fact, the break is often where the truth sits. A fractured portrait acknowledges that identity is layered. That we are shaped by memory, by experience, by contradiction, by life today, in the moment. That ourself is not a single surface but a series of overlapping thoughts, feelings and emotions, which shapeshift with life.

People respond to these pieces because they recognise themselves in them. They see their own complexity reflected back. I see myself reflected back. In a world obsessed with perfect images and curated faces, these broken portraits feel honest. They feel real. They make you feel seen. They give permission for us to be human.

And maybe that’s the real significance. A broken portrait isn’t broken at all. It’s simply telling the story of a life that can’t be captured in one clean line. It’s a reminder that beauty often sits in the places where things don’t quite align. That the cracks are part of the character. That the face we show the world is only ever one version of who we are.

Viki x