At the age of 25, after testing out careers in journalism and music, Robert Szot transplanted himself from Texas to New York and began teaching himself how to paint. Since 2001, he has been producing abstract oil-on-canvas and -panel paintings, full of overlapping blocks of color, expressive lines, and, sometimes, hints of architecture and human figures, reflecting his ongoing dialogue with himself and his adopted city. Speaking of his relationship to the place that fuels so much of his art, including a series of large-scale compositions inspired by the disappearing grittiness of the Bowery, he explains: “You love [New York] and you hate it, but it’s just that thing that keeps you coming back over and over again. And I feel like my work is the same. I love it and I hate it, but I’m compelled to stay.”