Everything in the work comes from somewhere. The red in the canvases is Houston summer — asphalt heat, neon signs on Westheimer, brake lights on the 610 at 2am. The yellow is optimism under pressure. The blue is the Gulf at dusk, and also the feeling of being very far from home while standing completely still.

Rex Autry was born and raised in Houston, Texas, and has never left for long. The city is not a backdrop — it is embedded in the work. Its scale, its sprawl, its refusal to be categorized, its genuine weirdness. The Menil Collection is ten minutes from where he grew up. That proximity to serious art without pretension shaped everything.

The practice began with no permission and no instruction. Permission was never asked for. Instruction came later, mostly from looking — at paintings, at walls, at the sky, at what happens when you put two colors next to each other and neither one wins.