As fantasy artist Marianne Plumridge wrote of her composition Spotting Starwhales II: “ represent ‘life’ and its journey through the realms of time and space.

The whale is also big, and its ways mysterious, but its presence in the void has a way of concentrating those intimidating qualities, serving them up to the viewer in a legible way. There is a bigness, infinity, and possibility in both space and the ocean. To fans of space whales, these scenes pack heavy meaning. In images both clumsy and refined, the space whale (and its cousins the space dolphin, the space orca, the starwhal, and the space squid) float through the void of the sky. The trope of the flying cetacean has spawned countless posters, Trapper Keepers, and video games, and thanks to the Internet, it’s now possible to see many examples of art featuring space whales. Lassen’s work is a refined-and lucrative-example of the popular “space whale” art of the 1970s.

In some paintings, the marine mammals fly through space itself, leaping across heavenly bodies. Lassen paints saturated marine creatures-especially dolphins and whales-in ocean habitats that merge with a starry, perfect sky above. His paintings, bearing mystical titles like Ancient Mysteries, Parentheses in Eternity, and The Great Answer, are rendered in tones of blue and purple. You’ve probably seen the art of Christian Reisse Lassen on the wall of a dorm room or a head shop.

Star wars space whale