Luke Skywalker Channeling the Force in the Snow — Print & Oil Painting

The eyes are closed. In a collection full of people staring hard at things, that on its own separates this picture from everything around it.

The left hand is raised open at chest height, palm up and slightly cupped, and a small green light burns just above it inside a cradle of little silver spheres. Hard straight rays fire out between the fingers and across the canvas, drawn as clean lines rather than as glow, which gives the object the look of something being tuned rather than something being held.

That light is the only source in the painting. It strikes the underside of the jaw, the near cheek, the collar and the folds of the tunic, and everything above the brow drops away into blue. The face is lit from below and from one side only, and the expression on it is neither strain nor triumph but concentration.

Around him is a deep blue night with a scatter of small stars at the top of the frame and a bank of pale mist lying across the bottom. The handling is soft and blended throughout, edges melted, closer to pastel than to oil, so the sharp green rays cut through it hard.

Every one of these weapons begins with a crystal, and the tuning of it is done by feel rather than by sight. Painting the man with his eyes shut and his hand full of light is the most accurate thing the picture could have done. From our Star Wars collection, alongside the same student sitting with his teacher and the man he becomes, weathered on a clifftop.