An AT-AT Looms in a Misty Grassland — Print & Oil Painting

Fog has removed the world. There is no horizon, no sky and no ground plane, only a pale grey field in every direction with a few blades of grass showing at the bottom right, and the machine standing in the middle of it with nothing to give its position away.

Look closely at the head and the mood changes. The front of it has been torn open: the plating around the viewport is blackened and split, a mesh of internal structure shows through the gap, and a bundle of cables hangs loose beneath the chin like something pulled out of a throat. The two chin cannons are still in place, aimed at nothing.

The body carries the same history in a quieter form. Armour panels are streaked with rust and water staining, one flank grille is choked with debris, the joints at the hips are packed dark. Whatever colour this was, it is now the colour of weathered stone.

And yet it is standing. All four legs are straight, the feet are planted level, the neck is up. The artist has not toppled it, which is a much stranger image than a wreck lying on its side would have been: the thing is dead and has not fallen over.

These walkers were built as siege engines for open country, armoured heavily enough to ignore anything a soldier could carry. Whatever stopped this one was not a soldier. From our Star Wars collection, beside its smaller cousin left standing in a forest and the same type advancing in formation across the snow.