Link Cradles a Wounded Zelda in the Dark — Print & Oil Painting

Almost nothing in this painting is lit. The entire canvas sits in the bottom two stops of the scale, a green so deep it reads as black, and the artist has allowed exactly three pale passages to survive: a bare shoulder, a fall of blond hair, and a strip of wet ground at the left.

The shoulder is the wound. Blood has been dragged across it in thin dry strokes and the arm below is bandaged; a hand presses over the worst of it while the other arm takes her weight from behind. Her head has tipped forward, eyes shut, mouth open, and his own face is turned so far away that we never see it.

On the ground to the left lies a long-hafted weapon with a red stain along the blade, and beyond it a shape that resolves, once your eye adjusts, into a body. The artist gives it no more emphasis than the stones. It is simply also in the room.

The round shield still strapped across his back is the only ornamented object in the frame, its rim catching what little light there is. Everything else has been allowed to go out. Part of our Zelda collection, which also holds the same scene with the roles reversed and the escape from ancient ruins together.