Sally Landis

Artist Statement

Sally Landis

From her tree house-like studio in the Oakland Hills, Sally Landis paints the California landscape, from the sun-bleached beaches of southern California to the mountain peaks of the High Sierra.  This year she painted them in the fog. 

“My paintings reflect my strong interest in pattern and color, and in simplifying this landscape to its compositional elements.  FogScapes challenged my desire to use bright colors, and made the simplification of color and composition even more important.  I have been inspried by the colorblock paintings of Mark Rothko, the white painting of Agnes Martin,  and the simplified landscapes of Wolf Kahn.”  

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Sally studied art and graphic design at UCLA.  For many years her San Francisco graphic design studio, Landis Designs Inc, produced marketing materials for the top corporations in the Bay Area.  When computers hit the design business she says, “I found it necessary to get back to my roots–squeezing color through a tube instead of a mouse.”

Her paintings have been exhibited in California and throughout the West as well as internationally, in venues as varied as the Yosemite Museum and the annual Salon of the Comité Nationale Monegasque in Monaco.   She is also the founding president of Arts for Oakland Kids, a non-profit organization which funds arts education programs for children in Oakland public schools.