How a Pride Month flag in a site photo inspired painter Christina S. MacKinnon.
Photography by David Norton.
Artist: Christina S. MacKinnon
Location: Morristown, NJ
Partners: Confidential Corporate Partner
Artwork: Christina S. MacKinnon, You Belong Here, 2025. Acrylic, ink, and spray paint on canvas. 72 x 64 in. © Christina S. MacKinnon.
Goal + Impact: Every site-specific commission starts with research into the space it will live in. For a lobby space at a corporate headquarters in Morristown, NJ, that meant sending New Jersey painter Christina S. MacKinnon a set of site photos — the wall, windows, light conditions, and the everyday flow of people in the space.
Those photos captured something we didn’t initially think was special, though. Our corporate partner had displayed the Progress Pride flag in the lobby for Pride Month, and it appeared in the shots right next to the wall where the painting would hang. For Christina, the flag became the creative brief: “When you shared the photos of the space where this piece would hang, I noticed the Progress Pride Flag on the adjacent wall,” she told us. “As someone who believes that everyone has the right to live and love freely, it was moving to see that visual expression of shared values. It made me feel even more connected to the space and to this commission.”
Pride Month displays are often temporary, but Christina wanted its message to last. So, she set out to paint a permanent homage to Pride — a work that would say “welcome” to every person who enters the building, every day of the year. The result is You Belong Here, a painting in which a lush, dreamlike garden fills the canvas in violet, teal, coral, and deep blue, threaded with white branches and swooping lines. At its center, a winding green path leads toward an open, arched doorway, inviting you to step inside.
For us, this project demonstrates what a site-responsive, artist-first commission can do. An artist reads a space closely, finds meaning in a detail no one expected, and turns a seasonal gesture into a lasting statement of belonging.
About the artist: Christina S. MacKinnon is a New Jersey-based, internationally exhibited artist working in Lambertville, NJ. In 2022, she was awarded an Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Influenced by her late-in-life ADHD diagnosis, MacKinnon uses her practice to explore the dissonance and connection between identity and emotion, as well as the therapeutic benefits of creative expression. She views painting as a process of excavation and a way to engage with deeper levels of consciousness. Her distinctive style infuses surrealist landscapes with swirling color, swooping lines, saturated hues, and dream-like apparitions.
