​HANDS OF TIME: FACE VALUE Original Art Print

The Work

The clock fills every centimetre of this portrait frame, cropped so tight the outer rim is nothing more than a dark curve in the upper right. Roman numerals in white and deep navy press through the upper section, partially consumed by the surrounding colour. Yellow dominates the upper left in thick, directional impasto strokes, colliding with teal and orange as the eye moves inward. Red and magenta surge through the lower half, raw and unfiltered. The clock hub sits at centre right, a bronze-black disc from which two white hands extend across the composition at a sharp diagonal. The paint texture is dense throughout, every layer visible, every mark deliberate. Nothing here is decorative. This is colour at full pressure.

The Inspiration

This work rejects the measured distance we usually keep from time. Most clocks hang politely on walls, observed from across the room. Face Value removes that space entirely, pulling the viewer into the mechanism itself until the numerals lose their authority and the colour takes over. The impasto technique reinforces that idea: time is not a smooth surface. It is layered, textured, and built up from many directions at once. Getting this close to a clock face means confronting what most people prefer to view from a comfortable distance.

What It Carries

There is no retreating from this piece. The proximity demands a response, and the colour delivers one before the mind has time to organise its reaction. Yellow pulls with urgency. Red presses with heat. The white hands crossing the surface remain precise and unapologetic, pointing somewhere specific in a composition that has otherwise surrendered to feeling. It is that tension, between mechanical exactness and pure emotional colour, that makes this work stay with a viewer long after they have left the room.

Living With It

Face Value works in spaces designed to hold a single commanding presence. Hotel lobbies, executive reception areas, and creative studios where one wall is meant to do all the work. The palette is warm-dominant with teal providing just enough cool contrast to stop the composition from burning. In a residential space it belongs in a room large enough to let it breathe, hung at eye level where the impasto texture becomes part of the experience. This is not a piece that competes with other art. It is the art.

Who It's For

For people who want their walls to say something without asking permission. For designers sourcing a single statement piece that anchors an entire interior concept without needing anything around it.

A Note on Sizes

This design is available in a range of sizes to suit your space. Available as A0 and A1 poster prints, rolled and shipped. Also available as mounted canvas prints in 16mm, 25mm, 35mm, and 50mm profile thicknesses in both A0 and A1. A large format 1200 x 2000mm option is available on both poster and mounted canvas. Email jacques@jacquesviljoen.co.za for a quote and full details. Please note that proportions shown in previews are for display purposes only. Your final print dimensions will depend on the size you select.

The most popular size across our canvas range is the A0 in a 35mm profile frame.