Darth Vader choking Rebel — Print & Oil Painting

Three elements, arranged across a wide frame at three different scales, and the difference in scale is the whole idea. At the left, a helmet the height of the canvas, cropped by the edge. At the lower right, an open gloved hand pushed forward almost into the viewer's face. Between and behind them, at a distance, a man hanging in the air with his toes pointing down.

The victim is painted at perhaps a fortieth of the size of the hand, a dark silhouette against a wall of red haze, arms limp at his sides, no features and no struggle left in him. Because he sits so far back and so small, the picture reads as something happening at the end of a long room rather than in a fight.

The hand is the most physical thing here: fingers curled into a claw, thumb held apart, the leather creased across the knuckles, the whole shape thrown out of focus in a way that suggests it is moving slowly rather than fast.

The helmet is worked in loose vertical strokes with red light dragged down the cheek and along the mouth grille, the near lens catching one small highlight. Everything else is smoke and rock in blood red, laid on wet, with the black of the armour bleeding into it at every edge.

The gesture is the character's signature and it has never needed contact. From our Star Wars collection, alongside the same grip painted at close range and the hand alone, reaching through smoke.