The TNG Crew's Poker Night from Above — Print & Oil Painting

The viewpoint is directly overhead, which means the crew has to be read from the tops of their heads and the colour of their sleeves. Not one face is fully visible anywhere in the painting.

Colour does the naming instead. Gold sleeves at the left and along the bottom, a blue-teal shoulder at the top, a plum jacket at the upper right, and red at the right where a bare scalp catches the light of the room. Between them the table is a green baize circle with a pale grey rim, and it fills close to half the canvas.

What lies on it repays slow reading. Cards face up in hearts and clubs, cards face down in patterned blue, chips scattered thin across the felt in ones and twos, and then a single great heap of silver and gold pushed up in front of the red sleeves at the right. One hand lies flat and open on the baize; another holds two cards tilted up and away from everyone else.

The surface is oil on canvas, the weave showing through the darks, the figures built in broad confident planes with no fussing anywhere. One object refuses to resolve at all: a mottled blue and green disc beside a gold shoulder at the upper left, dish or ornament or something else entirely.

The series ended at this table. The captain, who had spent seven years finding reasons not to sit down, finally did, and said he should have done it a long time ago. Painted from above with the faces withheld, the game becomes the subject rather than the players. Part of our Star Trek collection, and Picard Resting His Chin in Quiet Thought gives you the face this one keeps back.