Tyler turned to drawing as an emotional outlet during a troubled childhood. Though he eventually moved to Dallas to study commercial illustration, he attended only a few classes and remained largely self-taught, inventing his own visual language of biomorphic forms and architectural features.

In Guardian, a large form composed of red, blue, gray, and green features stands alongside a smaller counterpart, functioning, as the title suggests, as its protector. Set within a vast plain, the plants appear as benevolent, whimsical creatures inhabiting an otherworldly place. Tyler viewed his forms as having distinct feelings and personalities. “My forms communicate with one another,” he explained. “They are having fun together, and I feel free and happy when I am making them, but I have to leave them and let them go their way, and I go mine.”

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)