The Fiercest Calm

30" x 36", oil on canvas, 2013

The painting's title is lifted from a line in the song Concertina by Tori Amos:

Concertina
Concertina
A chill that bends*
This I swear you're the fiercest calm I've been in

but the content is inspired by my own experience with fierce calmness and is probably my most metaphorical and personal painting.

Here is a somewhat relevant blog post by Krista dealing with The Dark Night of the Soul.

I'm using the same photo reference of Kim here that I used for Without List 2, but this time it's used better, and not just because it's bigger and I've now got a better likeness of Kim; all of the additional elements make this a stronger painting.

Interesting aside: while putting together a music playlist to play as lobby music before and after screening Apocalypse Now at The Regent Theatre as part of the monthly Classics series that I program, I discovered I quite liked The Rolling Stones (after many years of being casually indifferent to their music) and obsessively played 3 CDs worth of their greatest hits exclusively during the painting of this picture. You'd think I'd have been listening to Concertina or at least a playlist of Tori Amos songs (which I have and I do), but this caught me off guard as well.

*I'm using this line as the title for an upcoming painting which, like this one here, is part of my Tournament of Shadows series.

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