Darth Revan Dueling a Teal-Bladed Warrior — Print & Oil Painting

The canvas is divided by temperature rather than by line. Everything on the right is cold: teal walls, a pale window, blue-green hair and cloth. Everything on the left is hot: a red blade, a red-lined robe, a figure in shadow. The two meet at the exact centre of the picture where the blades cross, and the painter has put a burst of white-green light at that point to mark the join.

Revan comes in from the left with the blade thrust out low and level, both arms extended, the body leaning into the strike. The mask is in deep shadow under the hood and only its edges catch light. His robes fall in heavy folds to the floor with a dark red lining showing at the hem, and the whole figure is painted as a mass rather than as a set of details, which is the opposite choice from the standing portrait of him elsewhere in this collection.

His opponent is turned away from us, and that is the boldest decision in the picture. We are given her back: a long fall of blue-green hair reaching past the waist, a pale blue gown, a wide gold sash at the hips with a fine gold chain hanging from it, and one arm raised to bring the blade up over the shoulder. No face, no name, no expression. She is defined entirely by colour and by posture.

Her blade is white at the core with a teal corona and it throws a long horizontal streak of light across the lower half of the canvas, catching the floor and the edge of her gown. The red blade throws a matching streak the other way. The two trails cross without either colour contaminating the other.

Behind them the room is only sketched: a tall arched window, a suggestion of pillars, everything soft and out of focus so that nothing competes with the two figures. From our Star Wars collection, alongside the twin blades lit in a dim corridor and the same figure walking through a burning canyon.