Darth Revan Standing Before a Blazing Red Sky — Print & Oil Painting

A frontal standing portrait, arms hanging at the sides, absolutely still, set against weather that is doing every bit of the moving.

The sky is red and orange turbulence with dark cloud rolling through it, and the artist has thrown a spatter of black flecks across the whole surface, some of it landing on the figure as well as behind him. The paint is deliberately dirtied, and it gives the picture the quality of something recovered rather than something made.

The mask sits deep inside the hood in its own pocket of shadow: a broad faceplate with a red rim following the line of the jaw, a fine grille laid over the mouth, and two long dark eye slots set wide apart. It gives back nothing whatsoever, and it has been placed almost exactly at the centre of the canvas so that there is no way to look past it.

The costume is layered near-black cloth over a tan tabard, a wide banded belt hung with rings and straps, a segmented skirt below it and a stud at each shoulder. All of it is painted matt, so the only real highlights in the whole figure land on the belt hardware.

At the very bottom edge a pale glow rises out of the frame, the tip of something ignited and held down out of sight. Withholding the weapon is the right way to paint a man whose entire reputation rests on nobody ever being certain which side he was on. Part of our Star Wars collection, beside the same figure walking a burning canyon and the cloaked version under a field of stars.