Darth Vader Locks Sabers with Ahsoka Tano Under Stars — Print & Oil Painting

Close in, and the two of them are already inside each other's reach. Ahsoka holds the left of the canvas with both blades up and crossed in front of her face; Vader fills the right, driving his own blade in flat across the top of the frame. All three beams meet at almost exactly the centre of the picture.

Her face is the only open one in the painting, mouth wide, teeth bared, taking the weight of the blow on the cross of her two hilts. The white montrals and banded head-tails are drawn precisely, the orange skin is the warmest colour in the canvas, and both gauntleted hands are visible on the grips. Opposite her the mask gives nothing at all, which is exactly the imbalance the artist wants.

The light comes from the blades and nowhere else. Hers burn pale blue-white, his burns red, and where the three cross the colour bleaches out into a hot white core with a pink halo around it. Behind them the room falls away into darkness, a scatter of stars, and two vertical red bars of light on the right edge.

The staging says everything about the relationship. He is above her, pressing down with the reach of a much larger body; she is braced underneath, pushing up, holding. He trained her, and she is the only person in this picture who ever called him by another name.

From our Star Wars collection, beside the wider version of the same fight and the Rebels duel.