The Gaybourhood

The underlying message of the Neighborhood is that if somebody cares about you, it's possible that you'll care about others. 'You are special, and so is your neighbor' - that part is essential: that you're not the only special person in the world. The person you happen to be with at the moment is loved, too.

- Fred Rogers

The Gaybourhood is an ongoing series of paintings that depict LGBTQ neighbourhoods in cities around the world. The project grew out of the curatorial exhibition Queering Space, which explored how queer communities shape and occupy urban environments.

Each painting begins with an aerial perspective of a neighbourhood and transforms it into a vibrant geometric composition that sits somewhere between cartography and abstraction. Streets, blocks, parks, and landmarks become patterns and colour systems, translating the lived experience of a place into a visual language of grids, rhythms, and movement.

These works function as portraits of cultural landscapes. Queer neighbourhoods such as Toronto’s Church and Wellesley Village have historically emerged as spaces of visibility, refuge, and community within larger urban systems. The paintings map these places not as fixed territories, but as accumulations of stories, gatherings, and histories that have unfolded across time.

Rather than documenting architecture alone, The Gaybourhood reflects on the relationship between identity and place. Each painting acts as a kind of cultural map, tracing how queer life leaves marks on the city and how the city, in turn, shapes the communities that inhabit it.