Day and Night - Virginia Cohn Parkum, c. 1989

In Day and Night, Virginia Cohn Parkum presents a face that appears suspended between illumination and shadow, a portrait constructed through abrasion, layering, and the uneasy coexistence of opposing tonal worlds. The figure emerges from a dark ground of deep blues and charcoals, while passages of chalky white and pale gray are scraped and worked into the surface, giving the visage a weathered, almost archaeological presence. Rather than modeling form through smooth transitions, Parkum builds the face through friction — paint is applied, dragged, lifted, and partially removed — allowing traces of previous layers to remain visible.

The surface carries a granular texture that suggests both erosion and accretion. White pigment appears scumbled across the features, catching on the tooth of the canvas and creating a fractured skin of light. Beneath and through these passages, cooler blue-green tones glow faintly, lending the face a spectral depth. The lips, rendered in a muted red, become the only concentrated warmth in the composition, drawing the eye toward the center and introducing a quiet pulse of human vitality amid the otherwise subdued palette.

The title Day and Night points to the duality embedded in the work. The left and right sides of the face do not resolve into a stable identity; instead, they seem to oscillate between exposure and concealment, presence and dissolution. Light does not simply fall upon the face but appears to be unearthed from within the layered paint, as if the figure is emerging from darkness while simultaneously receding into it. This tension produces a psychological ambiguity: the expression is neither fully alert nor withdrawn, inhabiting a threshold state between wakefulness and introspection.

Parkum’s handling of paint reinforces this liminal condition. Scraped passages suggest memory or time worn into the surface, while rough textures and ghostly overlays evoke the persistence of earlier states beneath the present image. The portrait becomes less a depiction of a specific individual and more a study of shifting interior states — the cyclical movement between clarity and obscurity, consciousness and dream, the seen and the felt.

Through its restrained palette, tactile surface, and delicate balance of opposites, Day and Night transforms the human face into a site of transition. The painting does not resolve the tension between illumination and shadow; instead, it sustains the quiet moment where both coexist.