In my latest collection of work, “Cowboycore,” I’m challenging the mythology of the Wild West, by filtering the nostalgia for rugged individualism through contemporary aesthetics. I draw inspiration from pop art, surrealism and impressionism, but explore the temporality of the current moment, using digital tools like Photoshop to create early drafts of my paintings. These are deserts with drop shadows. I spent all my life around art, studying art history and working in galleries, but I started painting for the first time during the pandemic, drawn to the melancholy landscapes of spaghetti westerns and the larger than life characters in Texas history. My works are at once an homage to a simpler understanding of history and a recontextualizing of the romantic notion of the American frontier.