The paintings in “Strange Tales” linger between reality, illusion, and imagination.  They are stories that reveal complexities hidden amongst the every day.  The narratives focus on observations of my encounters within spaces we inhabit.  They are places in which to run away, hide, and lose yourself.  The interiors and exteriors wander and crook, asking to be read slowly.  The overlooked and forgotten, the unusual and unidentifiable are cast in the shadows and in the light.  Many of these moments have been observed from life, but in these works they drift between fact and fiction.  Figures and animals live together in accord or opposition.  Those oddities are apparent not only in their interactions, but in aberrations of place – understood edges becoming unclear, objects merging one with another to become disjointed, uncertain presences looming.  The relationships between them are never fully resolved.  The land, the plants, the trees, and the animals long to be figures, just as the figures themselves long to be people.  Curiosities are in abundance and become stranger the longer you look.

Brooke P. Alexander is an Instructional Assistant Professor at The University of Mississippi.  She completed her BA in Studio Art with a minor in English in 2015 from Athens State University, and her MFA in Studio Art with a concentration in Painting in 2018 from The University of Mississippi.  Her work has been shown regionally and nationally.