The Art Side
Sandstorm an ode to artist’s childhood memories, and the gems between movie frames
Star Wars fanatic Chris Woods paints from the point of view of villain Darth Vader, with an eye for details other hardcore fans may have missed.
Dissecting deleted scenes from Star Wars on DVD for inspiration, painter Chris Woods knew he was on to something when he saw an image he recognized from art history on his TV screen.
Parsing through the scenes, he was looking for something other than the iconic images Star Wars fans know all too well.
As Woods realized, weird things happen when you use the pause button to parse the movement of the scenes.
“You find little gems in between the frames.”
One of these gems was from Return of the Jedi, the sixth film in the science fiction epic ( third if you’re an old- school trilogy purist).
Han Solo and the rebels are fighting Imperial Stormtroopers in a bunker. In the deleted scenes, they’re falling dead without any sound. To Woods, the scene looked comical and awkward.
“When I hit pause and took a still image, it took on a whole different meaning,” he said.
What struck him like a thunderbolt were the bodies of the Stormtroopers.
The way they were piled up reminded him of Eugene Delacroix’s famous work Liberty Leading the People.
Painted in 1830 to mark the July Revolution of that year, it shows Liberty as a woman holding the French tri- colour in her right hand as she leads the people to victory.
The painting has since become one of the iconic images of French revolutionary zeal and an example of 19th- century French romantic art.
Dead Soldiers, part of Woods’ Star Wars- inspired exhibit Sandstorm, doesn’t glorify or romanticize war. If anything, the undramatic pile of bodies is
I always said Darth Vader was the ultimate undercover cop.
CHRIS WOODS
ARTIST
an indictment of senseless killing in the name of a cause.
The title of the exhibition comes from Heroes in Sandstorm which refers to another deleted sequence from Return of the Jedi. The painting depicts principal characters C3P0, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo in a sandstorm.
There are 14 paintings in the exhibition including one of the artist as George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars space opera universe, and another of the artist’s son Peter as a young Obi- Wan Kenobi.
But as Woods continued picking scenes by pausing images on the DVDs, he began to recognize a pattern.
His selections were nightmarish and dark. He was seeing Star Wars from the point of view of Darth Vader.
As a Star Wars nerd, Woods knew that Vader was a former Jedi warrior who was an adept with the Force and could see the future. What if his paintings imagined Star Wars from the point of view of Darth Vader getting a glimpse of what was in store for him?
“I always said Darth Vader was the ultimate undercover cop,” Woods said. “The Emperor couldn’t turn his back on anyone except Darth Vader because he felt he had his total loyalty. Darth Vader’s conscience eventually caught up with him.”
Woods is known as a photorealist painter who has mined pop culture imagery via works such as The Church of Krispy Kreme, marking the arrival of the doughnut chain in Canada, and Five Star Service, which shows the artist dressed as a general with car logos replacing military medals on his chest.
One of his most recognizable paintings is McDonald’s Nation, which has appeared in Naomi Klein’s No Logo and several times in Adbusters.
While the paintings in Sandstorm continue his interest in pop culture, they also represent something more personal. For the Chilliwack- based artist they’re a return to his childhood: Growing up near Edmonton, he saw the original Star Wars movie seven times.
“I would credit Star Wars with weirdly being a big inspiration for me artistically,” said Woods, who lives in Chilliwack. “All I did when I was seven was draw pictures of ships and vehicles from Star Wars. It still has the glow of an idyllic childhood for me.”
On Saturday, the Reach will mark the opening of Sandstorm with a series of free events entitled Sith Happens. Woods will lead a tour at 12: 30 p. m. followed by a demonstration of charcoal drawing. There will also be Star Wars cookie- decorating and face- painting. At 2: 30 p. m., the gallery will screen The Making of Star Wars.
For anyone unable to make it out to Abbotsford, Woods’ work will also be on view at Vancouver’s Gallery Jones ( 1725 West 3rd Ave.) through July. The gallery will be showing works that include eight small oils that were preliminary studies for the larger paintings in Sandstorm.