Link Dives Through Clouds With His Loftwing — Print & Oil Painting

Almost the entire canvas is white or close to it. Cloud fills the frame edge to edge, the blue shows through only in patches near the top, and the figure has to be read against a background carrying almost no tonal weight at all. It is a very high key to hold, and holding it is the achievement of the piece.

He falls face down and slightly toward us, arms flung wide, one knee drawn up and the other leg trailing, so the body makes a loose X across the middle of the picture. The face is turned up to the viewer with the eyes and mouth open, and the expression is unmistakably delight rather than panic.

The costume is pale throughout: a green cap and tunic drained nearly to cream by the light, white gloves and boots, a rolled bundle of purple and white at the hip. Nothing on him is dark, which is why he can sit inside all that cloud without cutting a hole in it.

High above and slightly left, a broad-winged bird holds a flat glide against the one patch of real blue, grey-blue with warm markings along the leading edge. Far below, the cloud opens onto a thread of green and a river. At the far left edge a second pale hand and a scrap of white break into the frame, the only hint that he is not falling alone. Part of our Zelda collection, and Link and Fi diving toward the green surface continues this drop with a second body fully in view.