Mapping the Inner Landscape

A collection of 17 paintings

At the heart of Mapping the Inner Landscape lies the theme of emotional granularity, i.e., the ability to identify and name nuanced feelings. This skill has been proven to help us regulate our emotions by reducing reactivity in the amygdala, which is responsible for our fight-or-flight response. As such, these paintings ask us to notice, when lost within an undefined, nameless feeling, the specific emotional texture of it, its unique grit.

Of particular interest is how words serve as pathfinders in this investigation of the psyche. Do they reveal the true lie of the land, or do they draw borders around areas that were perhaps better left wild?

The atmospheric landscapes that make up this collection are the result of applying layer upon layer of watercolours, charcoal, pastels, acrylics, oils and cold wax to canvas. The resultant scenes lie on the edge of recognition, familiar yet strange. Mist, reflected light and shadow half obscure forms, mirroring the undefined terrains of inner experience.

Mapping the Inner Landscape constitutes the first collection of paintings ('Book 1') in a larger body of work titled Wordstrings — the result of an ongoing fascination with how we use language as building blocks, lenses and symbols in our construction, perception and communication of reality.

The 17 paintings in this book were exhibited in April 2026 at my first solo exhibition, hosted by 11 On Windsor Studio in Kalk Bay, South Africa. The event was opened by emotive experience specialist Dr Mizan Rhamboros, founder and director of PLEiS™, a human-centred design-research atelier, working at the intersection of lived experience, creativity, and wellbeing. An invited senior research fellow at the University of Vienna’s Faculty of Psychology, Mizan is a qualified architect cum interdisciplinary researcher in the geohumanities and psychological aesthetics.

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