“I render a place I call Borderlandia, a reimagined borderland full of life and movement. Through painting, drawing, video and performance I invite people to contemplate the beauty that exists in a land where people negotiate their place, where people thrive and struggle, and where people resist the idea of unjust borders.

These paintings are inspired by the vast landscape of Uvalde, Texas and Piedras Negras, Mexico. Painting landscapes is a way for me to understand the place where I am from. I grew up fishing and hunting with my father who taught me how to look at the land. My mother filled our home with textiles that created a soothing environment which helped me thrive in a sometimes, hostile town. Today, the U.S.-Mexico border is constantly being presented as a place of danger and violence. But to me the borderlands are home. It’s a place of humanity, solidarity, and compassion. Paintings of Borderlandia are my valentine to the borderlands. They are my own addition, threads of color, to the fabrics woven by my mother, father, and those that came before them. Weaving history, emotion, and lived experiences; it is a way of preserving the chispas of joys birthed from these lands.

My landscape paintings are abstract. Abstract painting can be a way of observing the hope and horror of the borderlands and help us imagine a better future for this land. In my paintings, I am able to express a range of emotions through repetitive mark making and resonating, vibrant colors. These paintings are based on principles of color theory, including the “Bezold effect,” an optical illusion, named after a German professor of meteorology, Whilhelm von Bezold, who found that a color may appear different depending on its relation to adjacent colors. I use this understanding of colors to create movement and vibration between small marks of colors in my paintings. Reflecting on a recent conversation with my Tia, who once encouraged me to make paintings with color, paintings of hope. Her advice guided me to find and create Borderlandia as a vibrant, colorful land. I realize now that colors have healing potential.

Recently, I began to insert dogs into scenes of Borderlandia. Dog heads and bodies float, lay and sit on the landscape. Flying, levitating, they are part of the energy exchanged when a border is crossed, moved or destroyed. This energy is often manifested as the anxiety and pain of crossing through the darkness of night. Dogs in Borderlandia become guardians and companions. They provide protection and guidance to border-crossers. A guardian that is with us through a very traumatic experience provides a witness to our journey, someone that knows what we have been through can also help us to heal from whatever trauma border-crossing has created. Portraits of dogs insert humor, comfort, and joy into difficult but urgent realities about the borderlands.”