David Crockett (King of Wild Frontier) 2025 by Lee Beach

In David Crockett (King of the Wild Frontier), Lee Beach reexamines the mythology of the American frontiersman through a lenticular portrait that shifts with the viewer’s perspective. One angle presents Crockett as polished statesman, another reveals the instability between public image and legend.

Using the changing surface of the print as both medium and metaphor, Beach explores how identity is shaped through politics, spectacle, and cultural memory. As the viewer moves, so does the meaning.

About the artist

A fourth-generation El Pasoan, Lee Beach draws inspiration from the cultural rhythm of the El Paso–Juárez border. His work explores how identity is shaped through labor, movement, and memory, where everyday symbols evolve into carriers of meaning—blending pop art aesthetics with mixed media. Beach transforms familiar imagery into compositions that balance tension, endurance, and restraint. 

Rooted in the Borderplex yet global in perspective, his practice reinterprets Mexican and American iconography through a contemporary lens. Recurring figures such as the cowboy do not appear as static legends but as bodies in motion, defined by risk, repetition, and time. Gilding functions as both material and metaphor, marking the moment where work becomes myth and myth becomes something displayed, circulated, and remembered.

Specs & Care

Size: 20" W, 26" H

Frame: Wooden frame, Glass.