Leonard McCoy Portrait Before a Spiral Galaxy — Print & Oil Painting

A spiral galaxy sits behind the right shoulder, painted with a bright hot core and two loose arms of pink and gold dust wrapping around it. It is placed exactly where a portrait painter would once have put a window, and it does the same job: it lights the edge of the head and keeps the background from being a wall.

The face is caught a second before speech. One eyebrow is fractionally higher than the other, the mouth is closed but not set, and the blue eyes are aimed slightly off to our left rather than at us. It is a small, exact piece of characterisation, and it is worth more than any pose.

The paint is digital but unashamed of the brush: visible strokes through the hair, a stippled quality in the skin, warm ochres and rose worked against the cool blue of the tunic. The delta at the chest carries the medical device, and the collar and cuffs are left as simple dark bands.

The chief medical officer existed in that series to say the thing logic would not, and this portrait puts him against the whole galaxy while keeping his expression entirely domestic. Part of our Star Trek collection, and it belongs beside Spock in Warm and Cool Side Lighting, the man he spent three seasons arguing with.