Twenty miles north of Fredericksburg, Christa Peyton has found home amidst a sea of rolling green hills. The artist and mother of two has lived in Fredericksburg since 2019, where she homeschools her young son, and expresses herself freely through the tip of her paintbrush.
Peyton’s story is a colorful one that has been marked by many moves. Long before relocating from Dripping Springs to the Hill Country, the Army brat, along with her three siblings, grew up on bases such as Fort Benning in Georgia and Fort Campbell in Kentucky. After her father’s untimely passing in 1977, her mother moved the family to the Texas capital, where the city’s quirky, authentic energy was a salve for young Peyton’s soul. “I loved Austin as a kid,” she said. “Lots of my friends were creative growing up.”
Years later, after graduating from Texas A&M University, she met her husband in Houston while working in the oil and gas industry. “When we were dating in the nineties, we would come to Fredericksburg, and I remember thinking then, this is so neat,” she shared of the city. “We just loved it, so eventually we got here.”
Since making the move, Peyton has experienced a creative renaissance. “At first, I was going crazy,” she said, admittedly. Though a stark shift from city life, the transition forced her to embrace the silence and use it to her benefit. “The calm and solitude absolutely gave me the quiet I needed,” she opined. “It opened up a window for me to create with no outside influences.”
In 2023, the self-taught artist transformed her former hobby into a dedicated daily practice. She began by painting her favorite poppy flowers and depicting their delicate, richly pigmented petals and stems through layers upon layers of glossy red, pink, and orange strokes. For Peyton, the saturated hues that pulsed from these works became a visual reminder of the vivid Revlon lipsticks made popular in the 1980s.
That connection ultimately got her thinking about the decade at large – which was a pivotal one for the artist – and inspired her next collection. “Movie quotes basically ruled our life,” she remarked of the time. “Pop culture, the colors, fashion, and things we referred to in everyday conversation with friends … all of it made us.”
One of her original paintings, Totally Rad, is a tribute to the decade’s zingy one liners, with bursts of neon orange and fuchsia, crimson and teal. In Air Guitar, bands of electric-colored strings remind of legends like Van Halen and Bon Jovi, whose 1980s songs became the soundtrack of her adolescence. Meanwhile, Festival pays homage to Austin’s celebratory culture and the artist’s prior pilgrimage to the city’s annual Aqua Festival on the shores of Town Lake.
Peyton’s holidays on the Texas gulf coast are another focal theme. In South Padre 1989, she uses shiny acrylic paint to revive the bygone memories spent cruising the southern coast in a maroon Oldsmobile packed with sun-in, cassette tapes, and fluorescent tank tops. Altogether these abstract canvases, composed with geometric patterns, sharp lines, and distinct textures, possess a palpable power fueled by the artist’s personal nostalgia and joie de vivre.
Within her home studio, colors stream like shooting stars. She likens the space to her very own candy shop, where her inner child plays freely amongst the sweetness of self-expression. Through trial and error, Peyton works diligently on her craft, eschewing organization for spontaneity, while leaning into myriad inspirations, be it her lifelong love of vintage textiles and fabrics or fresh flowers and photography.
“The colors choose me – it is intuitive,” she explained of her process. And though at times she has experimented with softer, arguably ‘safer’ hues, she’s consistently drawn back to the contrasting, bold, maximalist style that has become her signature. “It is my soul coming out on the canvas,” she shared. “I just slap some paint on and go, because if you think too much, you doubt yourself.”
Today, there is no doubting Peyton’s immense talent. In moving to Fredericksburg, she has claimed her creative calling and allowed her gifts to bloom gracefully, like the striking scarlet poppy flowers she knows and loves. “I can tell you right now I am 1,000% supposed to paint,” she said with a smile. “That is what I am here to do.”
