Geralt and Ciri Share a Campfire Under the Stars — Print & Oil Painting

Two thirds of this wide canvas has been given to sky, and that decision does all the work. Deep teal at the top edge cools into blue and then into near-black along the horizon, and across the whole of it lies a fine grain of stars with three or four meteors drawn as thin white scratches, all falling the same way.

A column of smoke rises from the right of centre, bends, and smears itself across the star field. It is the only vertical in the picture and it separates the two things happening in the lower band: a fire on the right, a pair of figures on the left.

Both figures are seen from behind, sitting on the lip of a ridge, and neither has a face. White hair on each, swords crossed on their backs, boots braced against the slope. The taller one leans forward with elbows on knees; the smaller sits upright. A tent edge closes the far right of the frame.

The handling is deliberately flat and quick. Mountains are three overlapping bands with no detail in them, the ground is one dark mass, the fire is a knot of pale yellow strokes over an orange base. Nothing is rendered, and at this scale nothing needs to be.

What the picture is about is the absence of conversation. Two people who have travelled a long way together are looking at the same fire and saying nothing, and the meteors are falling whether anyone remarks on them or not. It belongs to our The Witcher collection, and the pair standing together in swirling magic shows the same two on a much louder night.