Study for a Double Portrait of Alstonia Kohle and Her Daughter Galena, 2025. Ink on two sheets of vellum, 4 x 6 in.
The double portrait of Alstonia and Galena has a diegetic version, a painting by postwar artist Vallerant that hangs in a secluded corner of Kohle Manor. While Alstonia died in an accident many starcycles before the start of The Vaster Conspiracy, her legacy of artistic patronage lives on, influencing Galena’s eventual involvement in Vaster’s art counterfeiting schemes.
Study of Alstonia for a Double Portrait of Alstonia Kohle and Her Daughter Galena, 2025. Ink on two sheets of vellum, 4 x 6 in.
In this series of studies for a larger portrait of Galena and her mother, Alstonia, I’ve made use of the vellum’s translucency, stacking images on top of text copied by hand from the manuscript.
The text underlying this portrait of Alstonia comes from one of my worldbuilding documents and describes one of the many paintings adorning the walls of Kohle Manor: the only surviving double portrait of Alstonia and her daughter, Galena, who would go on to inherit the family’s properties, fortune, and art collection.
“Study of Young Galena for a Double Portrait of Alstonia Kohle and Her Daughter Galena,” 2025. Ink on two sheets of vellum, 4 x 6 in.
In this series of studies for a larger portrait of Galena and her mother, Alstonia, I’ve made use of the vellum’s translucency, stacking images on top of text copied by hand from the manuscript.
Allegedly, Galena didn’t even sit for the portrait herself, as she was living on the family’s estate outside the former Verlamion colony on the Valbaran continent at the time it was executed. Her mother is said to have posed as her daughter or hired a look-alike to play the part.
The text behind the portrait is from a conversation between Vaster and Galena that was cut from the manuscript’s second draft along with the rest of the dinner scene.
Study of Galena Wrapped in a Sheet, 2025. Brown and sepia inks and gouache on vellum, 6 x 8 in,
The character of Galena was drawn from many different sources. Her endless quest for increasingly intense sensations—and the use of heroic doses of alcohol and substances to approach such a heightened state—was inspired by the painter Francis Bacon’s biography and interviews. I also modeled aspects of her personality and speech on someone I once knew who was simultaneously a psychopath and a masochist: quite a combo.
A line from William Gibson’s Count Zero was also inspiring:
“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.”
Galena displays “inhumanity” through her inappropriate reactions to situations, whether it’s poking her nose into a painting she’s trying to figure out how to appreciate, laughing uncontrollably at a fistfight, or taking visceral pleasure in having large amounts of money stolen from her purse in an elevator car.