Virgo

The virgin — drawn in colour on black, an archetype explored in early pencil work.

Virgo is a studio work by artist Neve, coloured pencils on black cardboard, created in 2013.

"Virgo" is a studio work from 2013 — colored pencils on black cardboard — depicting an elderly shaman woman. Her face fills most of the frame: deeply lined, luminous-eyed, white-haired, rendered with extraordinary hyperrealistic detail. Around her, in the surrounding darkness, planets and moons float in silence. The black of the cardboard is not a background. It is space. She is already there, in it, at home. There is no explanation that quite fits "Virgo" — and perhaps none is needed. It belongs to a period in which Neve was making these kinds of works: intimate, careful, close to the face of something ancient.