Leroy Winter is a painter from San Antonio, Texas, currently based in Chicago, Illinois. Fascinated by the prominence of mythmaking in American culture, Leroy investigates symbols and iconography closely tied to narratives of the Western frontier and seeks to unearth the significance of these narratives beyond their precarious and hollow qualities. The works displayed in "Mirage" are intent on presenting these Western tropes as specters of our past, revealing themselves as hallucinations fading in and out of vision on a horizon. The ghostly appearance of the creatures portrayed in these paintings, manifesting as apparitions in the distance, aim to provoke the viewer to question their relationship with nature and, more specifically, to challenge the narratives that have been projected on the land that they inhabit.