John and June Allcott Gallery: One Week MFA Exhibition, Allison Coleman

Reception: March 8, 6-8 pm Rosy Retrospection explores themes of memory and nostalgia. Inspired by southern storytelling, folklore and memory, as well as social and political systems, these paintings call on the viewer to reexamine the past. Both our recorded histories and our own personal memories are flawed relics of a former time, contorted and controlled by the recorder. At a time when slogans like, ‘Make America Great Again,” are chanted by politicians, calling on Americans to reassert the past, I feel we must reconsider what it means to act on nostalgic notions. Many themes find their way into these narratives such as family, the domestic, the American South, Midcentury Idealism, the environment, and human relationships. Dreamlike worlds and faded memories are woven together to become chromatic representations of the human condition. Cherished memories and deep-seated fears exist side by side in disjointed harmony.