Swedish SF paintings

I've rarely been very interested in very realistic paintings. And I think the main reason is that 98% of those exhibit very little imagination. The artist rarely puts very much of himself into them.

A stellar exception is Simon Stålenhag's paintings. Wonderful realism with great SF.

A lot of art is very very loud, but has little life in it. This is the opposite. 

I also really like that this book has not only the paintings, but text also, which tells some kind of story together with the paintings. I have never understood why combining text and pictures is so rare, except in comix, which almost nobody considers Art. 

Perhaps it is simply that painting and writing separately are very complex endeavors, hard to learn to do well and effectively. And so, making them work well together is like singing opera while racing a motorcycle.