Christopher Klein
b. 1954
After 26 years as Art Director for National Geographic Magazine, Christopher Klein has returned to his fine art roots in surrealism. The artist creates his own world through surrealism whether it be an archaeological recreation, deep sea representation, or a futuristic scene. Realistic juxtapositions proved to be the artists key to scientific art with the National Geographic Society. Klein’s ability to render in high detail with a vivid imagination are key to create accurate paintings of historic people, the places they lived and worshiped, as well as the inner workings of both animals and machines. After 26 years of scientific art, Klein’s art is now going full circle back to his fine art roots in surrealism, now reflecting realistic images in unnatural settings or unnatural images in even more bizarre environments.
Desert Desert
oil on panel
24 x 18 inches
price: 14,000.
As a Mexican musician sings and plays the guitar dressed for the day of the dead. He is being unknowingly stalked by a mythical beast. Little does he know that he is singing about his own mortal demise. Life is transient.
Will-O-the Wisp
oil on panel
24 x 12 inches
price: 12,000.
A broken flaming light bulb emerges from a rusty wreck representing old, flawed ideas based on fantasy.
The flame and the fairy within are the “Will-O-the Wisp,” (a ghostly light seen over rural marshes in Saskatchewan believed to be fairies fluttering in the night sky.
The Hawk (which is my icon for modern science) snatches this apparition away and returns us to the reality that what the viewer is seeing is nothing more than phosphorescent swamp gas.
Appalachian Rust
oil on panel
18 x 14 inches
SOLD
Depicting an allegory of man’s great ideas, the puffer fish represents these ever expanding ideas. Usually those ideas are faced with road blocks. Even though the fish has protective spikes, the threat of those ideas can be set asunder by evil forces represented by the Bat-Cat flying in to deflate the fish thereby stopping man’s progressive ideas.
The Sounds of the Changing Season
oil on panel
18 x 24 inches
price: 10,500.
A violinist, playing a melancholy tune, helps conjure up the change of season from fall to winter on Halloween, as represented by the black cat. The cat is holding the Tempest in the Teapot kettle. The raven, who is bursting forth from the steam of this tempest, represents the cold, dark and harsh winter to come.
Wisdom Trumps Violence
oil on linen
20h x 16w inches
price: 8,800.
“Toying (e.g., rider on toy horse) with violent threats is not wise. The sounds (e.g., horn) of violence (e.g., spear and leopard) will never overtake wisdom (e.g., owl and pearl)”—Christopher Klein
MusCATteer
oil on linen
24 x 30 inches
price: 12,000.
Men and felines have always hunted birds in historic rural Maryland. This painting imagines a new collaboration between the two.
Cat as Catch Can
oil on canvas
12 x 16 inches
SOLD
"During the Renaissance, the popular sport of Catry (similar to the sport of Falconry) was so successful that it caused the extinction of the Dwarf Bat-eared Flying Elephant of Northern Europe."—Christopher A. Klein
The Spring Piper
oil on canvas
16 x 12 inches
price: 8,800.
“An imaginary human hybrid representing “mother nature” resides in a ruined building symbolic of a decaying society. As the crows flutter and the human hybrid plays a bucolic tune, green shoots emerge from the ruins symbolizing rebirth and victory of nature over human destruction of the environment.”—Christopher Klein
Coming Out of the Wasteland
oil on linen
16h x 20w inches
price: 8,800.
“After centuries of suppression, women ascend to high positions (e.g., a modern-day falcon-headed Egyptian goddess). Women will lead (e.g., pulling a camel caravan). The societal shift results in the hatching of eye-opening (e.g., eggs containing large-eyed tarsiers) gems (e.g., tourmaline) of wisdom. “—Christopher Klein
Wisdom of Peace
oil on panel
21 x 17.5 inches
SOLD
“The perfectly round pearl is considered something rare, fine, and valuable and is prized as a precious gemstone the world over. Created over long periods of time in the soft folds of a shelled mollusk the pearl is made up of many layers and has come to symbolize wisdom. A wise old owl carries a pearl of wisdom in his beak while gazing upwards at a pair of peace doves flying overhead.”—Christopher Klein
Amber Waves
oil on linen
18 x 24 inches
SOLD
“Just as amber entombs living things giving us a picture of the past, this post-apocalyptic scene depicts the next wave or era of life. Bats, with their advanced senses, have risen to dominance. One discovers in an archeological ruin a preserved, but extinct, female human encased in amber. We will never know what this finding reveals about humans’ past in the former America the Beautiful.”—Christopher Klein
Heli Hatchlings
oil on panel
16 x 12 inches
price: 6,800.
“The smiling figures in the helicopter, hatching from a frozen crabapple, have false hopes that they are on a fun adventure, unaware of the imminent danger- they are about the chameleon’s prey. Fortune can turn on a dime.”—Christopher Klein
The Duet
oil on panel
13.5 x 11.5 inches
price: 6,500.
“The Mythical tree of life extrudes from the body of a Christian tortured by the thought that pagan religions, represented by the double-headed snake may hold some truth. The tree is playing Brahm's Lullaby in an attempt to calm the subject's troubled mind during his epiphany - discovering the other religion is his.”—Christopher Klein
Horses from Mars
graphite on paper
15.5 x 12.5 inches
price: 1,800.