Poetic vision of Terrell James at Art League Houston

Before she could paint in a way that satisfied her, Terrell James had to learn to close her eyes and trust that what she could hear and smell was as important as what she saw.

Drawn to nature and landscapes, James sensed early that she expressed herself best with abstraction. She wants to translate the experience of seeing, not tell viewers what to see, likening her painting to music.

Her show "Hover" at Art League Houston, celebrating her moment as the 2016 Texas Artist of the Year, illustrates James' poetic vision.

Although she is widely known as a painter, the show includes two shelves of fist-size bronze sculptures from 1997 and 2014 and a series of monoprints, "Ten Stones," that James made in 2012.

She hadn't really noticed the relationships between those pieces and the show's large canvases, which date from 2007 to the present, until the show was installed - more on that in a bit.

"You just can't escape yourself," she said.

Last week, James also celebrated the opening of her first solo show at London's Cadogan Contemporary Gallery.

"I have the privilege of showing all over the world, but it's also a great privilege to have one place you're from," she said.