Temperance and Temperance Reversed

I am THRILLED to finally reveal my latest piece - the double-sided Temperance from Nerikson for their 5-year anniversary competition. This was a huge, crazy project to take on in a short period of time (45 days!), but it's helped me grow enormously as a painter, progress I'm excited to take to the next (smaller!) project. Huge thanks to both Orcbutt and Jero who helped me to plan my approach and iterate on the final result.

My partner and I love tarot and when I saw this I knew I had to take it on. The aspect of balance plays heavily in the piece and I played with contrasting that between sides quite a bit in color, temperature, number and approach to background objects, and even down to how frenetic my painting was and the music I listened to while painting them. I ended up going with a very vibrant, saturated style reminiscent of what you'd see in a deck of tarot - the bright yellows of the Rider Waite Tarot in the front, the dozens of small details on each side, and more, while playing with more subtle elements to give it some realism like with the marble and frame. I landed on a yin-yang motif for the front, Temperance upright, that I felt respected the original meaning with the Asian interpretation, and then played with that subtly and not so subtly, while finding ways to break balance on the reverse - including adding a third arm which I ended up with after a happy little accident.

Thrilled with how it turned out and so happy to finally share this with the community.