South Texas Residency

Art Center of Corpus Christi and Texas A&M- Corpus Christi’s Center for Coastal Studies

My Time on a Spoil 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 our nervous systems begin to reset after three full days immersed in nature. This residency gave me the chance to test that theory.

I remember thinking: yes, this is essential.

Creating a New Body of Work

In the nine months following my residency, I returned again and again to the hundreds of photographs I’d taken on that little island. I looked for images that captured the feeling of being there—spaces where boundaries softened, where land became water, where bird and fish seemed to flow into one another.

Many of the paintings in this series were created using a new technique: oil on watercolor paper. This allowed for larger, looser experimentation and a softness I hadn’t accessed in previous work.

While my earlier pieces often explored the movement of South Texas grasslands, these new paintings offer something different—windows into a vast, subtle world. Every wave, every clump of dirt and wind-stirred feather is part of a larger motion. Gentle. Unbroken. Alive.

These works are not just realistic—they’re atmospheric. They invite the viewer to pause, get lost, and feel the quiet truth of beauty and belonging.