Tarbean Kvothe

Every Kvothe I paint is unique. In Young Kvothe, he is happy and focused. As Kote he is either sad and hopeless or he is the forced-happy barkeep who wears it like a mask. In Jackass, Jackass he is an obnoxious teenage boy, carefree and glowing.

In Tarbean Kvothe he is starving, dejected. He clings to his fathers broken lute, on an old slate rooftop – his eyes are glazed, locked in remembering of a horrible memory of his family. Tears have run tracks through his sooty freckled face.
The city of Tarbean can be seen in the background. There is a pillar – representing Trapis who exists amongst the sprawl as a structure of the city providing assistance – but he must make his way there and it is very far.

His foot is braced against a stone downspout shaped like a gargoyle. It spits water down, which with the revered card, comes back towards his head. I like to put a lot of subtle symbolism in my work – in this instance, the gargoyle is symbolic of the monsters which haunt him (the chandrian) – his foot is pressed against it, and he is upwards – symbolizing his flight from them. However, the reversed water is coming back towards him, defying all gravity – a foreshadowing that the currents of fate are as uncontrollable as water – and things will come back to him from his past and cross again.