Neurocity (Aqua Blue) 2009

Landon Mackenzie made Neurocity (Aqua Blue), and I can only imagine the process she went through while creating it. The surface buzzes with layered colours and forms – a network of squares in blues, greens, reds, and browns, like a digital mosaic. You feel the artist building up the layers, adding, subtracting, and reworking. It's like she's mapping a space that's both real and imagined. I’m sure she made intuitive choices and that accidents happened on the canvas that she chose to keep. I imagine Mackenzie seeing a similar painting by Agnes Martin and thinking, “I want to make my painting deeper, more chaotic, more like a messy desktop.” I bet she even had a few false starts until it fell into place. And isn't that just like life? We are all just making do, connecting with artists across time who are also trying to make sense of the world through color, form, and texture.