Darth Malgus Draws His Blade in a Shadowed Hangar — Print & Oil Painting

Almost nothing in this canvas is lit. The hangar gives up only a few facts: a row of small red lamps running along the floor to left and right, a red band painted across the deck plating, and the suggestion of very large dark structures overhead. The rest is graded black, and the figure stands in the middle of it with unclaimed floor running away on every side.

He is painted full length and nearly frontally, weight even on both boots, which is an unusually static pose for a duellist. The armour is heavy and angular: layered dark plates over chest and shoulders, ribbed grey panels down the thighs and shins, thin seams of red glowing at the joints. A long cape falls from one shoulder to the floor without a single fold catching light.

The head is the exception. It is bare, pale and scarred, and the lower half is covered by a black breathing apparatus clamped across the nose and jaw. The eyes sit deep under a heavy brow. Painted this pale against this much black, the skull becomes the brightest object in the picture and the eye keeps returning to it.

The blade is carried in the right hand, down and out, running to the deck as one red line with a faint reflection under it. The left arm reaches away in the opposite direction with the fingers open and slightly curled, a hand doing something other than holding a weapon, and the painting declines to say what. Between the two arms the composition opens into a wide, slow, deliberate shape.

Two more of him hang in our Star Wars collection: the standing portrait in smoke and the close-up crackling with energy.