General Grievous Bares His Metal Fangs in Close-Up — Print & Oil Painting

The head fills two-thirds of the frame, turned just off square, close enough that the bone-coloured plates of the mask show their scratches and their yellowed edges. The eyes anchor everything: two amber discs set deep in dark sockets, lit from within, ringed by a thin red glow.

The lower face has come open. The jaw plates are splayed apart and the vertical bars behind them stand exposed, which is the expression the title is naming. It is less a mouth than a shutter that has separated.

What the artist has really painted, though, is the back of the head. Where a skull would be there is an open cage of machinery: coiled cable, a large ringed joint at the neck, plating that overlaps like ribs, hoses feeding down into the shoulder. The mask is the only part of him shaped like a face, and the picture keeps showing you what stands behind it.

A red blade enters at the lower left with the silver hilt closed in his fist: one weapon only, from a figure known for carrying several at once. The background is a flat maroon gradient with no detail whatsoever, which is the correct decision: nothing is allowed to compete with the head.

He is a cyborg assembled around what was left of a Kaleesh warlord, and he learned his lightsaber work from a Sith who never intended him to be more than a weapon. Part of our Star Wars collection, next to the weathered close-up and the four-bladed study.