Ro Laren in a Monochrome Brushstroke Portrait — Print & Oil Painting

The paper is left showing. White ground runs down both edges and across the bottom, the strokes stop wherever the artist stopped them, and the background is nothing but a dozen vertical drags of grey-blue pulled down over the white with a loaded brush.

The head is worked almost entirely in that same cool grey, with white for the lit planes of the cheek and forehead and near-black for the hair. Two things carry colour and no more: the mouth, and the tunic. The title calls the picture monochrome and the head keeps the promise; the deep maroon at the bottom breaks it on purpose, and that sudden warmth is what stops the whole sheet from going cold.

The pose is guarded. The body has turned away and the eyes have come back without the head following, the brows are heavy and level, the mouth closed and a little hard. Whatever else it is, this is not a portrait of somebody enjoying the sitting.

The red is the correct colour, since she flew the conn and conn was command. What the picture leaves out is more interesting: the nose is painted smooth and the ear is buried under the hair, so neither the ridges nor the earring appears, and the earring in particular was the piece of home she was permitted to keep on in uniform over the objections of her colleagues. Part of our Star Trek collection, and Kira Nerys Smiling Against a Violet Backdrop wears both of them openly.