A Night Elf Celebrates Fireworks Astride a White Tiger — Print & Oil Painting

The sky is having two events at once and the artist has kept them separate. Along the top, broad green curtains of aurora hang across a deep blue night full of individually painted stars; below them, six or seven fireworks burst in pink, magenta, gold and white, each drawn as a clean radial spray of fine lines rather than as a blur. The aurora is soft and slow, the fireworks are hard and instantaneous, and neither contaminates the other.

The figure sits at the right in a pale sleeveless gown, long dark hair falling past her shoulder, one long ear rising clear of it, her head tilted back and her mouth open in something between a laugh and a shout. Her right hand holds up a small teal goblet with a bright rim, and the gesture is unmistakably a toast. She is not mounted: she is sitting on the ground with her weight leaned back into the animal beside her.

The animal is enormous and entirely relaxed. A white tiger with black striping lies along the lower right of the frame, chin up, eyes shut, one forepaw extended, its tail curling away to the left across the grass. It takes up more of the canvas than she does and it is asleep, or close to it, through the whole display.

The margins are full of small quiet company. Pale spirit like creatures sit in the grass at several points, a white owl perches at the right, blue butterflies drift across the middle, a red paper lantern hangs in the branches at the upper right, and dark foliage frames both top corners. Far to the left, a violet city of slender spires stands in silhouette with the fireworks going up behind it. Measured hue is blue then blue violet with the brightness low, and the pinks are loud only because everything else is not.

The festival being celebrated is a war memorial. It marks a victory won thousands of years ago against a demonic invasion, when this people, the plains herders and a race of stone folk fought together and held, and it is kept every year with lanterns, feasting, fireworks over a sacred lake, and formal thanks paid to the oldest members of each community. A painting of somebody raising a cup to the sky with her cat asleep beside her is exactly how that anniversary is actually spent. From our World of Warcraft collection, next to the same priestess standing beside her white tiger and a parent and child walking home through the same city at night.