Elias Crane · No. 150

The Whale's Sky

The Whale's Sky performs the great surrealist exchange: it swaps the sea and the air. A vast, gentle whale drifts among soft clouds above the rooftops of a quiet town, swimming through the sky as though it were the ocean, while the townsfolk below carry on unaware. The image belongs to the tradition of the marvellous made matter-of-fact — the impossible rendered with such calm conviction that it becomes, for a moment, entirely plausible. Crane gives the leviathan a benevolent, dreamlike serenity; there is no threat here, only wonder, the childlike delight of a creature freed from its element. The contrast of the enormous, weightless animal and the ordinary little town supplies both the humour and the poignancy. Painted in luminous, storybook clarity, it carries the atmosphere of a half-remembered dream. Whimsical, majestic and quietly moving, it turns the sky into an ocean and the everyday into a place of miracles. It is an image that makes the viewer, like the whale, want to drift.

An original oil painting on canvas by Elias Crane, painted to order — never a reproduction. Modern surrealism — dreamlike landscapes, impossible architecture and floating objects in luminous, uncanny skies, in the spirit of Dalí and Magritte.

Artist

Elias Crane

Medium

Oil on canvas

Finish

Unframed, ready to hang or frame

Made

To order, by hand