Asajj Ventress Bares Her Blade Beneath a Crimson Hood — Print & Oil Painting

The hood is up and it is the largest shape on the canvas. Deep red cloth wraps the whole head and falls to the waist, and behind the shoulder it rises into four stiff points cut like the petals of something that has dried. Nothing about the garment behaves like fabric in wind; it has been carved.

Inside it the face is bloodless. Grey-white skin, deep sockets, a dark stain over the eyelids and the lips, and a stare aimed hard off to the left of the frame at something the picture will not show us. She is the only cold colour in the image.

The blade is a surprise. It is drawn thin, closer to a wire than to the usual bar of light, and it crosses the upper left of the frame from a slim hilt held down at her right hand. In the other hand, out at the right edge, a second hilt is gripped with a length of red cloth trailing from it.

The body is bound rather than dressed: dark strips wound around the torso from hip to shoulder, more of them wrapped up both forearms to the elbow, a heavy metal ring at the waist, red panels falling to the bottom edge.

There is no location behind her at all, only a warm olive and rust gradient with a single soft light coming from the left. That emptiness suits the stretch of her life this costume belongs to: cast off by the master who trained her, hunting for money, working for nobody. From our Star Wars collection, next to the same red cloth with the hood thrown back and another daughter of that order standing against red.