The Shipwrecked Man and the Sea 1912

Arthur Rackham made this drawing, The Shipwrecked Man and the Sea, with ink and watercolor, and it's like stepping into a dream, or maybe a slightly spooky fairy tale. Look at the way he layers the washes of color, how the forms emerge gradually from a haze of delicate marks. There's a softness to it, but also a kind of melancholy. I'm really drawn to the figure of the sea. She rises up out of the water, a spectral presence with arms outstretched, like she's offering something or maybe warning of danger. The way Rackham renders her, she's almost dissolving into the sea and sky. And then you've got that tiny figure on the beach, the shipwrecked man. He seems so vulnerable against the vastness of the ocean and the power of the sea. It reminds me a bit of Odilon Redon, that same sense of mystery and the sublime, where beauty and terror are all mixed up together. Art, like life, is never just one thing, is it?