The Queen’s Gambet or Persona?

To win a game of chess you must capture your opponent’s King! However, the most dominant piece on each side of the chess board is the Queen. And one of the oldest and best-known openings is the Queen’s Gambit, whereby white offers to sacrifice a wing pawn in exchange for better control of the center of the board. In general, a gambit is an action entailing a degree of risk that is calculated to gain an advantage. However, for this opening, when the sacrificial pawn is accepted, black can quickly find it difficult to hold on to its pawn advantage.

Even though there are many styles of chess sets, the Queen is always a solid piece within that set that symbolizes royalty, strength, and power.

However, in the Queen’s Persona © Oil on Canvas painting, some of her inner strength, and power are exposed for all to see as the Queen piece floats above a symbolic ancient chess board with missing black squares. And because this setting is her mirror image of herself, her social façade also reflects the role in life that she is playing.

The Queen’s Persona was initially self-commissioned in December of 1980 but would not be completed until August 2011. Why this painting took more than 30 years to complete is a topic for another post. Nevertheless, when my children were in grade school in the early 1990s, we would sometimes have discussions on their impressions of the (then) work in progress and its companion painting, The King’s Persona © Oil on Canvas. What surprised me the most was their general description of the characters as “statues” rather than chess pieces. Their reply to my clarification questions about “statues” was “because of their eyes, Dad, and they don’t look like chess pieces!” Children have a gift for capturing the essence of reality, even in the surreal world. In His Sermon on the Mount, Christ taught His disciples that the eye is the light of the soul. So, from a child’s perspective, not seeing into their eyes is akin to not seeing the light of their soul. But from the surreal perspective, the Queen’s inner strength, and power are already exposed for all to see as per the semi-impressionistic lung, stomach, uterus, fetus, and fallopian tube.

The Queen’s Persona was initially inspired by a painting of a Knight chess piece that appeared in Byte Magazine in a 1979 fall edition. However, because the central character is a full-bodied Gothic style white chess piece Queen, the theme of the painting is to visualize the hidden characteristics of the female persona as a “mirror, mirror on the wall” challenge. The objects located on the chess board surrounding the Queen identify some common characteristics of her feminine identity (tools for grooming, communicating, socializing, and relaxing). The setting is high in the sky symbolizing her goal to remain “above the fray.” The background and ancient chess board are painted in bold layers of color and reveal the obvious blemishes of an imperfect life.

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