Growing up along the U.S.-Mexico border greatly influences his artistic, aesthetic, and conceptual ideas. Images with cultural, biographical, and art-historical references are carved and burned into the surfaces of his paintings, drawings, and prints. Hide Fox and All After references Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a phrase used to describe what we now call Hide and Seek.

A key aspect of Armendariz's work involves using seemingly simple and common symbols to create narratives that connect on multiple levels. “Everybody can understand a plant in a vase, a coyote, a bull, or a crow. These aren't difficult things to understand. But if you allow them, they speak on other layers and levels going back to art history, mythology, popular culture, and belief systems.”