Green Beach 

Walter Battiss painted this vibrant scene, Green Beach, using bold colors and simplified forms. The canvas is divided into a blue sky and sea, with a striking green expanse representing the beach. The composition is immediately striking, almost unsettling, because one would not expect to see a green beach. Battiss uses color to challenge our expectations, destabilizing the traditional, realistic depiction of landscape. The figures are rendered in equally striking colors: golden yellows, oranges, and a lavender-pink. These colors are not merely descriptive; they function as signs, evoking emotions and disrupting conventional perceptions of space and form. The artist employs flat planes of color and bold outlines which emphasizes the two-dimensionality of the canvas, rejecting traditional perspective in favor of a more modern, stylized representation. Ultimately, Battiss’s use of color and form serves as a deliberate act of reinterpretation, inviting us to reconsider our understanding of the world and how it can be represented. It offers not a mirror of reality but a vibrant, re-imagined vision.