Alex Roulette

At Swim, 2010, oil on panel, 28 x 42 in.

Buffalo Water Park, 2011, oil on panel, 36 x 36 in.

Chopping Wood, 2010, oil on panel, 24 x 34 in.

Hedges, 2011, oil on panel, 32 x 32 in.

Windmill, 2010, oil on panel, 30 x 44 in. 

Dug-Out Pools, 2011, oil on panel, 40 x 30 in.

Blue Highway, 2011, oil on panel, 44 x 33 in.

Artist Statement

My current series of paintings depict fabricated American landscapes. The invented landscapes arise from archetypal citations of past and present cultural influences. Placing figures into these landscapes is an attempt to take advantage of the viewer’s natural ability to extrapolate narratives. By creating the paintings using a conjuncture of various photographic references, I continue to explore the distinctions between photographic and painted space. The disjointed nature of the source images, contrasting with the way they are realistically unified, take on a contingent sense of reality.

Inventing landscapes allow memories of places and events to be fictionalized. Coalescing unrelated photographs is done in a way comparable to the process in which the mind synthesizes images when recollecting memories or imagining new images. As opposed to culling images from an abstract memory bank, I utilized tangible sources, many of which come from the vast image resources our contemporary culture offers. The current expanding abundance of accessible images is allowing the imagination to expand the ability to visualize unseen places.

Alex Roulette’s Website