Dan VanLandingham of West Tisbury was already an accomplished painter of Vineyard landscapes when he set out to advance his work with a M.F.A. from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2009. “I had professors and peers saying, ‘Why are you painting landscapes, it’s been done a million times,’” VanLandingham said. “So I just went into a phase where I explored every idea about landscapes that I could think of. A lot of them were failures, but it did evolve my work.”

In the years that followed, VanLandingham emerged with a new stylistic technique, and big ideas about the intersection between landscape painting and contemporary art. His current work thrives on the juxtaposition of the natural and the manmade, exploring the spectrum of landscapes and the human relationship to them.

Read the story in Arts & Ideas Magazine.