On "Mechanisms" and Finding Comfort in Maps

I received the following comment on my painting "Mechanisms": "I love the full busy canvases you make. They remind me of maps, which I find comforting in a way."

This led me to connect the relationship between my personal life and my abstract paintings, where dense fields of colour and mark-making remind people of cartography and the macro-logics of landscapes.

In my personal life, I've lived in different countries, and at some point, moving from city to city, I think I lost a clear sense of where I belong. Tracing paths that resemble maps might be my subconscious way of communicating a need for structure and grounding amid so much movement. Maybe that sense of belonging is what creates the comfort that person refers to.

These paintings aren't meant to be read all at once. They're dense, layered, and built to be lived with, more like environments than images.