Laguna Madre Series
The Laguna Madre series developed from an artist residency on a remote spoil island along the South Texas coast.
The work emerges from direct encounters with landscape and continues through extended studio processes. Built slowly over time, the paintings reflect an interest in pattern, movement, and interconnection — tracing how wind, water, light, and living systems shape perception and experience.
This ongoing series forms part of a broader inquiry into how we relate to land through care, presence, and duration..
South Texas Residency
Art Center of Corpus Christi and Texas A&M- Corpus Christi’s Center for Coastal Studies
The residency took place on a spoil island in the Laguna Madre, one of the most ecologically significant hypersaline lagoons in North America. The island is part of an active research environment, shaped by dredging, tidal movement, and ongoing conservation study.
During the residency, I lived and worked at an off-grid research station, embedded within the rhythms of the surrounding landscape. Days were structured by light, weather, and tide rather than external schedules, creating conditions for sustained observation and close listening.
This setting offered a rare opportunity to work within a fragile and complex ecosystem — not as a backdrop, but as an active presence guiding both process and attention.
Time on the Island
On my way back from a week alone on a spoil island in the Laguna Madre, a friend asked me, “Does it feel like stepping back through the looking glass?”
“No,” I said. “It feels like I was finally touching real life — and now I’m walking back into a world that makes no sense.”
Studies suggest that nervous systems begin to recalibrate after several days immersed in nature. This residency offered the conditions to experience that shift firsthand.
I remember thinking: yes, this is essential.
Working on Site: A short video documenting the residency environment and my working process on the island.
From Field Study to Painting
Now, more than a year after the residency, I am still completing paintings that began on the island. Part of this reflects my process — slow, layered, built over time — but it also speaks to how deeply the experience shifted my way of seeing.
The residency sharpened my attention to how multiple elements coexist and inform one another: wind, light, texture, movement, and history. That way of listening now runs through everything I make.
The paintings in this ongoing series grow from field studies and photographs, but also from understandings that emerged only later, through time and distance. Each work carries its own voice, while together they form an accumulation shaped by memory, place, and sustained attention. I am still learning what they are trying to teach.
