There is a moment when looking at Lee Beach’s newest work that the image shifts in front of you.

Stand in front of one of his lenticular pieces and you see one thing. Move a few steps to the side and another image emerges. The effect is difficult to capture in a photograph because the photograph removes the most important part of the experience: movement.

Inside Beach’s El Paso studio feels fitting. Much of his work is built around motion between past and present.

His “Founding Fathers of the West” series makes full use of the effect. Viewed from one angle, the familiar historical portrait remains intact. Move across it and the figure becomes a cowboy.

The transformation is funny, but it also plays into Beach’s larger interest in how historical figures become symbols.

“These portraits were painted of — [not] who these characters were, they’re who they want to be remembered as,” he says. “They’re very romanticized.”

Beach adds, sayings of the portraits, it’s imagining what each figure might have said if he had been part of the West. The “Portrait of Alexander Hamilton” shifts to reveal that “a man’s work signs his name for him.” Those phrases eventually connect to what Beach calls the “cowboy code.”

“All the quotes kind of go into a larger theme of the cowboy code where all these principles are what represents a cowboy,” he says.

The cowboy appears throughout Beach’s studio, sometimes gilded in silver or gold leaf, sometimes based on photographs more than a century old.

“It’s very local, but also very global,” Beach says.

That is part of the figure’s appeal. The cowboy belongs naturally to the Southwest, but it has also become an international symbol.

“It started during the American cattle drive during the 19th century, and slowly in the 20th and 21st century, it became more of an icon, like a fashion statement, and anyone around the world can recognize the symbol,” he says.

Beach has another lenticular series in development, “Vincent Drove West,” which places cowboy hats and bow ties over portraits of Vincent van Gogh.

The combination is playful, but Beach found a historical connection underneath it.

“Vincent was born around the same time the cattle drives truly started in America,” he says. “Both his life chapter and the end of the American cattle drive ended in 1890, at the same time an ocean away.”

Beach’s other recognizable works, the brightly colored prints of the Mexican soft drink, Jarritos, also line the walls of the studio.

“Warhol on steroids is what I call it,” he says. “The idea was to encapsulate a symbol that really represents the border and is also colorful.”

That instinct carries through much of his practice: find an image people already understand, then alter the way they experience it.

A towering Virgin Mary piece in the studio follows the same logic, and was created with lowrider artist Albert Sepulveda of Chaparral. Taking a year to get right, it takes a small retablo from the El Paso Museum of Art and dramatically changes its scale and material.

“What if we did a Virgin Mary with a candy paint?,” Beach suggested.

The studio itself is another extension of Beach’s relationship with El Paso. A massive metal desk was fabricated by Savage Metal LLC and owner Juan Stockmeyer, whose work connects Beach with craftspeople in Juárez.

“It’s our sister city so using the other side to do art and work is what I love to do,” Beach says.

Beach is now showing work in galleries around Texas, but his ambitions extend beyond that.

“New York is the mecca,” he says. “The angle would be to have a lot of museum representation and having museums want to carry your work and showcase them in exhibitions. That’s the pinnacle.”

But, he is not rushing toward it.

“It’s always slow and steady,” Beach says. “a steady stream up.”