The Balance of Power

Back at GenCon, I displayed two new paintings, one of which won a jury award. The Balance of Power was an uncommissioned painting finished up right before the convention. I'd been wanting to do it pretty much immediately after finishing the two paintings, Golden and Silver a couple of years ago. Immediately after finishing Golden, I kicked myself rather hard for painting it so small--just 8x10". I just think now about what might've been had it been more like 16x20". It was especially hard since I knew I was going to do Silver shortly thereafter, and wanted them to be a matched pair. So, when upon completing them, I thought of other pieces that might or might not follow along those lines, I knew that they'd have to be bigger.

Well, at 18x24", I seem to have fulfilled that goal. Whereas the former pieces were merely decorative, with nothing further to them, with this particular piece I did seek to inject a little more than eye-candy (though there is hopefully plenty of that, too). For this reason, I titled the piece differently than "Black/White," which might've been the easy out. In planning the piece, I intended to emphasize the opposite aspects of the figures, while expressing the equal dignity of all people, as well as their complementary nature. Though typically long on words, I'm rarely long on explanations when it comes to paintings (at least, unsolicited). The above, however, adequately explains all you need to know to explore the piece.

The painting is available, which you can zoom in on, as well as its sketch. But rather than just point you there, below you'll find some tight detail scans. Each box below is an enlargement of 1"sq.

Update 6/2010: The painting was reworked, and you can read more about that here.