Painter Esteban Cabeza de Baca quietly defies the laws of space and time, blending past, present, and future in richly layered landscapes of the American Southwest that mirror the myriad histories of the terrains they depict. From his studio in Queens, to on-site painting at the US-Mexico border, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this short documentary follows a young artist as he strives to give form to both his personal story and the still-present legacy of colonialism. “The way that my paintings develop is in a very intuitive approach of what I feel, but also searching for who I am,” he says. “Growing up along the border and not being connected to a lot of my heritage, I have had to find it on my own.”

In the desert outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, Cabeza de Baca works in classic en plein air painting style on a portable easel. Observational painting is the foundation from which the artist develops his large-scale canvases back in his New York studio. Often working on a canvas dyed with hand-crushed cochineal, Cabeza De Baca employs a range of abstract gestures and illustrative imagery, where recognizable desert forms like mesas and cacti inhabit the same space as cosmic rips and swirls. In these layered compositions, the artist deconstructs colonial-era depictions of the American West, populating the land with the people, cultures, and spiritualities typically left out.

With his mother beside him, Cabeza de Baca paints the highly politically charged border between the United States and Mexico at San Ysidro, California. Painting, in the artist’s words, is an attempt at freedom, justice, and joy. As his mother expresses how hard it is to see the fences in the once-open landscape where she spent her childhood, Cabeza de Baca remarks, “We have to express it in order to get past it and imagine something bigger than it.”