Based in Dallas, Texas, artist and designer Brandon McKenzie creates paintings that investigate rhythm, process, and restraint through a minimal, largely grayscale palette accented by blue-tinged graphite. Each work unfolds over weeks as he continually reworks the surface, allowing every new layer to respond to the traces of the last and positioning the act of making as the central focus rather than a predetermined outcome.

Rooted in early studies of the calculated, geometric farmlands of western Kansas, McKenzie’s current series distills those landscapes into pared-down compositional explorations that have gradually shifted from graphite-heavy geometry to more open, spatial arrangements. Techniques first developed in earlier portrait paintings—where rough, expressive strokes and the removal of paint became as crucial as its application—remain integral, creating a dynamic tension between addition and erasure. By limiting color and emphasizing structure, gesture, and layered, palimpsest-like surfaces, his work seeks a balance between disorder and arrangement, revealing light and space within the composition as its true subject.