Kerrigan Emerges in a Blaze of Green Light — Print & Oil Painting

The format is tall and narrow, and the painting uses it as a chimney. A column of orange fire climbs from the bottom edge through the middle of the canvas, tapers as it rises and is snuffed out just below the waist of the figure standing in it. Above that point the picture is green from edge to edge, a heavy bottle green with darker growths pushing into it from both sides.

Symmetry holds the rest together. Two enormous scythed limbs sweep up and outward from behind the shoulders in matching curves, more scythes repeat the shape at the far left and far right, and the head sits exactly on the centre line. Fold the canvas down the middle and most of it would meet.

Close in, the drawing is unusually fine for something this lurid. Every plate on the torso carries a raised ridge, the mane separates into individual cords, the fingers end in claws that have been given knuckles, and a spray of small sparks drifts up around the hips. A signature sits in the lower right corner, written small enough to be missed on a first pass.

Green is not the colour the Swarm is usually given, and keeping the atmosphere green while the fire below stays orange holds the two readings apart: the light behind her is not the same event as the light beneath her. Filed in our Starcraft collection, near the close-up of her purple-eyed stare, which drops all the spectacle and keeps the face.