Mapping Ontology
I’m interested in placing what I think into painting, by pulling in what triggers my ideas into a visual mapping. My work is a study of the world around me (an ontological dive) and in the end creating a shared personal dialog.
I realize that reality is constructed in the mind of the observer. The people in the paintings are people I might not know…or a composite of people I have known. The paintings are a way of casting memories and a visual form of writing.
Matthew Dennison
July 2026
Ontology is the study of being. It is the branch of philosophy that investigates the nature of existence, the features all entities have in common, and how they are divided into basic categories of being.[1] It aims to discover the foundational building blocks of the world and characterize reality as a whole in its most general aspects.[a] In this regard, ontology contrasts with individual sciences like biology and astronomy, which restrict themselves to a limited domain of entities, such as living entities and celestial phenomena.[3] In some contexts, the term ontology refers not to the general study of being but to a specific ontological theory within this discipline. It can also mean an inventory or a conceptual scheme of a particular domain, such as the ontology of genes.[4] In this context, an inventory is a comprehensive list of elements.[5] A conceptual scheme is a framework of the key concepts and their relationships.[6]
I’m interested in placing what I think into painting, by pulling in what triggers my ideas into a visual mapping. My work is a study of the world around me (an ontological dive) and in the end creating a shared personal dialog.
I realize that reality is constructed in the mind of the observer. The people in the paintings are people I might not know…or a composite of people I have known. The paintings are a way of casting memories and a visual form of writing.
Matthew Dennison
July 2026
Ontology is the study of being. It is the branch of philosophy that investigates the nature of existence, the features all entities have in common, and how they are divided into basic categories of being.[1] It aims to discover the foundational building blocks of the world and characterize reality as a whole in its most general aspects.[a] In this regard, ontology contrasts with individual sciences like biology and astronomy, which restrict themselves to a limited domain of entities, such as living entities and celestial phenomena.[3] In some contexts, the term ontology refers not to the general study of being but to a specific ontological theory within this discipline. It can also mean an inventory or a conceptual scheme of a particular domain, such as the ontology of genes.[4] In this context, an inventory is a comprehensive list of elements.[5] A conceptual scheme is a framework of the key concepts and their relationships.[6]
