Once the much-maligned painting style of Absinthe-fuelled bohemians, Cubism has been given new life by American artist Tommervik.
The muted tones, strong lines and graphical shapes Tommervik creates are strongly reminiscent of the figures and still lifes pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque at the turn of the 20th Century. However, there's not a bottle or a guitar in sight in these images, which instead transform the world of Star Wars into abstract oils on canvas.
Over the last year Tommervik has started to add paintings of
Star Wars characters to his repetoire of sportsmen, bears and Pee Wee Herman, to name but a few. He's now racked up quite a collection, the majority of which you can view in our gallery, below, which reflects a childhood fascinated with the Hollywood franchise.
Tommervik told Wired.co.uk: "Star Wars impacted on my life at an early age. I remember all the neat toys, and remembering them and my childhood inspired me to paint."
Interestingly, the artist relies entirely on these vintage toys and his imagination as the reference point for his paintings, saying his craft gets in the way of any pop-cultural film research: "I don't remember which Star Wars film was my favourite. It's been such a long time since I watched the films -- I'm often too busy painting."
Instead of their stage presence, Tommervik is inspired by the aesthetics of the sci-fi characters who appear in his images. "The characters and the scene set-ups are not important to me. It's the colours and the shapes of things which make me want to paint the subject."
While Tommervik claims that the Millenium Falcon offers the best combination of those factors, he is also a droid fan, saying R2-D2 has always been his favourite character, with R5-D4 following a close second. Tommervik has painted the droid in various Cubist reincarnations.
As to why he chose the synthetic Cubism style of painting, Tommervik claims it is as natural to him as wanting to paint Princess Leia and Darth Vader performing a two step, "I represent everything in the same way, it's just my style -- it's abstract."
Check out Vader looking like Picasso's Weeping Woman and other unusual images of Star Wars in our gallery below.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
