La Baleine (The Whale) was painted by Frederic Walperswyler, in 1990. It is a huge mural, six-feet high and twenty feet long – whale size – painted in acrylic over five wood panels. She (whales are always feminine in French) appears lithe and strong in her watery medium; embodying and resisting; powerful and graceful. Frederic says that it was the experience of working on this immense creation in small sections that brought him to abstraction in his work. Like writing composed word after word, he gathered her form stroke by stroke out of the abyss of the surrounding ocean. You can see more of his paintings in the virtual gallery, Artnet
La Baleine
