Recipient Information
Location
Oxford, Mississippi
Year of Award
2024
Grant or Fellowship
Southern Prize and State Fellowships
Grant Amount
$5,000
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.
Artist Statement
The paintings in “Strange Tales” linger among reality, illusion, and imagination. Their stories reveal complexities hidden among the every day, drawing on observations of my encounters in the spaces we inhabit to run away, hide, and lose yourself within. 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 light. Observed moments often drift between fact and fiction. Figures and animals live together in accord or opposition. These oddities manifest not only in their interactions but also in the distortions of place—defined boundaries blur, objects meld into one another, giving rise to disjointed and uncertain presences.
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 they are observed.