Sean Landers paints animals whose coats are replaced with textural, unexpected motifs, in a direct reference to the surrealist René Magritte and his “Période Vache”, which symbolizes to Landers “total artistic freedom”. Woodgrain is a recurring motif in the artist’s work, used in unconventional ways, forming for example the coat of the wild cat in Lion in Winter. The surrealist effect is enhanced by depicting the animal removed from its natural habitat into a snowy landscape. Landers’ paintings also negotiate the visual relationships between language and image, in that his animal patterns play with the visual metonymic phrase “to coat.” The phrase can be used in the sense of “applying a coat of paint”, just as it can refer to the natural fur of an animal. Thus, through the hand of the artist, each animal receives a freshly painted coat of fur.