Luke Skywalker Ignites His Green Blade in a Doorway — Print & Oil Painting

The doorway does the composing. An eight-sided opening fills the middle of the canvas, backlit by vertical slats of pale light, and the figure stands inside it as a black shape in a black cloak, so the only contour he has is the one the door lends him.

Almost nothing of him is described. The hood is up, the face is three or four strokes of grey with the eyes lost inside them, one gloved hand comes forward at waist height, and the cloak drops to the deck in long unbroken folds. There is no second hand, no belt fitting, no boot.

The blade hangs straight down at his side, aimed at the floor rather than at anybody. It is a hard green line wrapped in a bloom of green vapour along its lower half, and the light it gives out travels no further than his own hem and a soft reflection in the polished deck.

Two runs of white rectangular lamps climb the walls left and right at a steep angle, and they are the only other light anywhere. Between them there is smoke, and behind the smoke there is nothing.

This is the moment a corridor full of armoured droids stops being anyone's problem, and the painting keeps its side of the bargain by showing the hood, the blade and not one detail more. From our Star Wars collection, alongside the same silhouette further down the same hallway and the dark troopers cut down at the end of it.