Visual art watch: 'Rethinking Landscapes'

In our concrete cradle that is Philadelphia, it’s sometimes a struggle to remember the lush forests and delicate waterways that surround the city, only to be appreciated during weekend getaways before returning to the rat races.

Alex Losett, a St. Petersburg, Russia native and artist who has made Philly her home, invites us to take a moment to revisit nature and abandon our urban dependence in her solo show Rethinking Landscapes, a collection of her oil paintings of serene woodland scenes of Northeastern Pennsylvania.

This is also her inaugural exhibit in Philly, as she held a solo show entitled Framing Uncertainty this past June in Paterson, N.J. at The Art Factory, a factory vault that has been converted into a space to showcase work as well as hold art classes.

Of her time in Russia, Losett says, “I can’t tell you how it is in Russia now, but I can tell you how it was when I left, which were the dying days of the USSR. There was still an artist union, which in retrospect was a good thing because it’s the same as any professional society like the Bar [Association] or the American Medical Association; it’s like a trade. It was similar in the style of any professional society, you had to have an education.”

Regardless of the style in which Losett was trained, there was one thing that’s undeniable, and that’s the intensity that pours out of her work. In Rethinking Landscapes, the oil celebrates raw and uninhibited nature.

“Nature is a place somewhat antithetical to our urban society,” Losett says over coffee in Center City. “Urban society places a lot of expectations on us, age, looks, clothes, intellect, education and we give a lot of that meaning. Nature doesn’t care if you’re fat, ugly, poor, broke, and you can enjoy whatever you find there without having any judgments placed on you.”

While Losett notes on the environmental concerns of the area that she focused on for this collection, this is not an outright political message. She uses her chosen space as free range to explore and experience emotion.

“Because I was educated overseas and in a different tradition, in a tradition that places a considerable amount of value on emotion in art,” Losett explains, “To me if we remove emotion out of that subjective presentation, it’s a loss.”

Rethinking Landscapes will be housed in St. Joseph’s University Gallery from through Sept. 19, with an artist reception on Sept. 4 from 6 – 8 p.m.