A Golden Sith Samurai Raises a Blazing Saber — Print & Oil Painting

The ground is nearly black and stays black across most of the surface. Measured over the whole image the brightness comes in around a seventh of full, which makes this one of the darkest pieces in the group, and everything that is visible has had to be lit by the weapon itself.

What that light finds is ornament. A tall helmet with a spread crest and swept side flanges, its metal scratched back to a dull pewter. Below it a wide gorget in cream and old gold, covered edge to edge in curling flame patterns, with two small red rectangles set into it like lacquer inlay. A forearm guard lies horizontally across the lower frame carrying the same fire motif, and the gauntlet gripping the hilt is red, studded with a row of pale rivets.

Two eyes burn out of the helmet in white hot orange, and beneath them the face guard closes in a row of vertical slats that read unavoidably as bared teeth. It is the most aggressive passage in the picture and the artist has kept it small.

The blade leaves the top right corner as a broad bar of orange white, hot enough that it has bleached its own edges, and it scatters small embers down the right side of the canvas. Saturation across the image runs above a half, which is very high, and all of it is concentrated in that narrow diagonal and the gold it falls on.

Take the armour away and the pose is simply a man holding a sword at rest across his body. The design does the rest. From our Star Wars collection, beside the red-armoured version painted against a pale wall.