Fantasy Wall Art

Fantasy art gives an artist permission to break one rule and keep all the others. The rendering is usually careful and the light is usually plausible; what is impossible is the subject itself — a deer whose antlers are feathers, a horse made of moving water, an old man who appears to be partly the landscape he is standing in.

Why the restraint is what makes it work

The pieces here that succeed are the ones that change a single thing. A realistic stag with impossible antlers is stranger than a wholly invented creature, because the eye accepts most of the image and then catches on the part it cannot. Once everything in a picture is invented, nothing in it is surprising.

That is also why the palettes tend towards the naturalistic — watercolour washes, dusk light, mist. The believability of the setting is what makes the impossible element land.

What is in this collection

A seer: a bearded figure rendered in watercolour, wreathed in blossom, at the point where a person stops and the landscape begins. Celestial deer with feathered antlers, more heraldic than animal. Stallions formed from surf. And figures with something ambiguous about their edges.

Where it belongs

Bedrooms and children's rooms, mostly, and studies. Fantasy work rewards being looked at properly and repeatedly — there is usually a detail you do not catch on the first pass — which makes it better suited to a room you spend time in than to a hallway.

It also suits a room with some age or texture in it: timber, linen, worn leather. Against very hard modern surfaces the watercolour treatments can look adrift.

Scale and framing

Medium to large, because the detail matters and it disappears when reduced. A generous mount and a plain frame suit these better than a decorative one — the image is already doing something unusual and does not need help from the surround.

They also pair well with botanical work, since so many of these pieces have flowers somewhere in them.