Featured image: Ocean Break, Stuart Landis, 2023, oil paint, 12 x 16 in. / 30.48 x 40.64 cm.
Stuart Landis reimagines the beachscape with vibrant, inverted palettes that transform familiar coastal scenes into dreamlike explorations of perception.
Stuart Landis paints surreal coastal visions with inverted color palettes, transforming familiar beach scenes into luminous explorations of memory and perception.
His 2023 oil paintings Watching the Tide, Woman in the Breeze, and Boarder 1 fuse figuration with surreal color inversions, evoking both nostalgia and estrangement. By flipping reality on its head, Landis pushes viewers to reconsider memory, time, and the fragility of human presence within vast landscapes.
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Watching the Tide, Stuart Landis, 2023, oil paint, 20 x 28 in. / 50.8 x 71.12 cm.
In Watching the Tide (2023), Landis depicts swimmers and beachgoers bathed in glowing yellow highlights against a deep blue sea. The figures appear almost spectral, as if suspended between reality and memory. The ocean, traditionally rendered in blues and greens, becomes a liminal zone of electric contrasts, symbolizing the way recollections of place shift in the mind. This painting captures not only the meditative rhythm of waves but also the fleeting nature of human connection with the sea.
Woman in the Breeze, Stuart Landis, 2023, oil paint, 18 x 24 in. / 45.72 x 60.96 cm.
Woman in the Breeze (2023) shifts to a surreal shoreline of yellow skies and rose-tinted sands. A central figure stands mid-motion, her skirt lifted by the wind, while seated companions look on. The inverted palette heightens the dreamlike atmosphere, giving a sense of warmth and alienation simultaneously. The work highlights both presence and absence, the woman’s stance suggests vitality and immediacy, while the strange colors make the scene feel as if it belongs to another dimension or to a fading memory.
Boarder 1, Stuart Landis, 2023, oil paint, 18 x 24 in. / 45.72 x 60.96 cm.
In Boarder 1 (2023), Landis presents a lone figure holding a board and staring toward a glowing orange horizon. His back turned, the subject becomes an archetype of longing and anticipation. The intense inversion of colors, purple skin tones against fiery skies, strips the beach of its typical leisure connotations and instead situates the viewer within a surreal psychological landscape. This work resonates with themes of threshold and transformation, embodying the tension between action and hesitation.
Together, these works illustrate Stuart Landis’ exploration of memory, perception, and altered states. His use of inversion transforms ordinary coastal imagery into luminous meditations on how we experience place and time. By destabilizing color, Landis reveals that reality itself is fragile, always subject to re-interpretation, always on the edge of becoming something else.
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Swimmer, Stuart Landis, 2023, oil paint, 12 x 16 in. / 30.48 x 40.64 cm.
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