The clocks went back on Sunday, and I already know what happens next. I look up from the table around 5pm and the window has turned into a mirror.
I used to take this personally. Now I take it as a cue to paint the two things that keep me company at either end of the day.
The Moon
The Moon from my Inky Tarot series is silver and white on a field of near black, with a scatter of tiny stars and the title lettered by hand along the bottom edge. It is painted in acrylic ink, which does something I love on a small card. A little pigment goes a long way, and the dark stays properly dark.
I have painted this card more than once, and the moons are not twins. Each has its own pattern of craters and clouds, and its own arrangement of stars. If you hold two of them side by side, it feels a bit like comparing two different nights.
The Sun
The Sun is the moon's cheerful roommate. A bright yellow disc sits in the middle of a blue sky, ringed with fine gold rays drawn one line at a time. Those rays are metallic acrylic ink, and they are the part I was happiest to finish, mostly because there are a great many of them.
I like that the two cards share a white border and a hand-lettered title. They look like they belong to the same deck, which they do. One is for the hour when you switch on the lamp. The other is for the hour you wish you had a little more of.
Small Enough to Keep Close
Both cards are original ACEOs, small enough to rest in one palm. They fit a journal page, a shelf, a gallery wall or the corner of a desk where you want something calm to look at while the evening comes in early.
The Moon and The Sun are on eBay now, each one a one of a kind original. If November has you wanting a little silver or a little gold nearby, they are there.
Therese Tucker is the artist and founder of Starthistle & Quartz, an illustration and surface pattern studio in the Pacific Northwest. Her work lives in the liminal spaces between the waking world and the dreaming one.
