Since Townley Gallery opened in 2006, its mix of contemporary visual art—including paintings, jewelry, photography and sculpture—has proved a success. And judging from the current “Mode of Consciousness” show, it has another winner on its  hands.

Granted, “Mode of Consciousness” is partly made up of work by founder and director Shane Townley, whose mesmerizing, ethereal landscapes are reason enough to stop by for a visit.

Take Silent Marsh, which appears lit up in the gallery’s front window. Townley adroitly captures the mix of sky and fog, the fog with the plants poking out of the water and bunching together on a small mound of land, the reflection of the plants in the water, the small stick bobbing on the surface, and the greens and blues shimmering through the earth tones. Not only does silence resonate (even through the glass from the sidewalk), but so resonates the temporal character of silence.

By their very nature, marshes are prone to regular floods, and depending on location, home to some of the world’s most dangerous predators, such as alligators and crocodiles. What might be lurking beneath the water, behind the fog, or farther up the land in Silent Marsh? On canvas, all that’s there is the drama between the plants and deepening water—just how long can they remain upright before succumbing to the oblivion of the fog? For now, long enough.

Rather than painting en plein air—when artists paint outside in order to capture the “real thing”—Townley reflects on the imagery created in his mind’s eye. Captured are his personal feelings, longings and subconscious impressions projected through dreamlike, minimal imagery. Made real is the viewer’s visceral response.

His style comes through in his approach to common subjects such as waves, palms, figures and landscapes. Take Stand Alone, where on the surface, the basic elements are familiar (backlit landscape, trees, a prominent tree, gray sky, fog), but beneath these, the painting evokes a sense of familiarity that feels more like a distant memory, a forgotten dream, or another world you can’t quite remember. As a whole, the elements ring both surrealistic and realistic (how the tree trunks blend with the ground, how the branches thin in the fog). The interactions between these qualities live a life of their own on the canvas.

Several of Townley’s landscapes offer the viewer a dreamland environment for their minds to inhabit, a setting in which to contemplate, particularly Silent Sky, Mystification and River of Patina. Other artists featured in the gallery employ the landscape to create a similar dreamlike effect. Karen Brailovsky uses saffron and bold lines to dramatize the light interacting with the hills and mountain peaks. Hugo Rivera’s paintings emphasize a kind of landscape of the female form.

Ben Horne’s nature photography, without any digital filters, manages to capture on large-format film the interplay between realistic and (seemingly) surrealistic elements found in nature. Before taking pictures of a location, Horne usually camps out for a few days, studying the light and getting a feel for the area. As a result, his own intuitive connection with the environment becomes the underlying subject of his work.

The abundance of landscapes in the gallery are balanced by depictions of vertical figures, most commonly human. Several artists portray the human form stretched out as if made of rubber, such as Eren Alptekin’s mesmerizing Gathering. In Aurora Aguirre’s mixed-medium Sea Lions in Kelp, the swirls of the kelp and the currents of the underwater atmosphere create any number of shapes, faces or figures. Leon Leigh’s welded and cartoonishly lanky sculpture The Shopper serves as a complement to the subjects in Townley’s Four Figures, which appear more like shadows detached from their bodies, riding the light.

“The only thing that is real in this world are the natural elements,” says Townley, who insists that “with feeling and emotion, art comes to life.” Townley’s own work, and many of the gallery’s picks for the show, validates the potential for art to transport one’s consciousness, for the piece to become the living moment—all there is—if only for a little while.

“Mode of Consciousness” at the Townley Gallery, 570 S. Coast Hwy., 949-715-1860; townleygallery.com.