Alex Roulette

Gallery Affiliations: George Billis Gallery

Region: MFA Annual

I depict fictional and occasionally fantastic scenes that convey the blurred sense of time and place that memories have. The dreamlike landscapes incorporate familiar elements of suburban life that both stylistically and symbolically represent a quasi-nostalgic ordinariness. The isolation and dislocation of cars, houses, and figures and the exploration of subtle spatial relationships recall the hazy state of dreams, in which certain details fall into place while others fade away into the unconscious.

I begin each new work by gathering a large collection of source material. I meticulously photograph environments and collect found images such as vintage postcards. In constructing the painting, I use combinations of these reference images to fabricate an open-ended narrative that has the emotion of a memory. The resulting paintings are both realistic and uncanny, recalling some idealized vacation and conjuring a longing for past experiences.