Four Stylized Troopers Stand in Formation — Print & Oil Painting

The device that organises this picture is a white rectangle. Four figures are lined up inside it against a dark starfield with teal electrical arcs crackling behind them, and their weapons deliberately break out over the border at the bottom and the sides. Contrast measures near four tenths, the highest reading in the group, and the frame is what makes that possible: hard white edge, hard black interior.

Every helmet has been given a mouth. Rows of long teeth are painted across the lower faceplate of all four, curving back toward the ear in the manner of nose art on a combat aircraft, so that the blank vents and grilles of the standard design are read as a snarl. It is the oldest trick in military decoration and it works here because the underlying object has no expression to override.

The four are not uniform. Two wear white plate splashed with red; two wear sand and khaki armour, one of them with a blue grey chest section and a marked band on the upper arm. Their weapons differ as much as their paint: a carbine, two long support weapons on bipods, and one heavy piece fed by a belt, with a bandolier of cylinders across the chest of the third figure.

They are posed rather than fighting. Weapons held across the body, weight even, all four turned slightly inward toward the centre of the frame, looking out at us. It is a group photograph.

Our Star Wars collection holds it alongside the official version of how this army wanted to be seen and another squad that refused to match anyone.