Alexandra Rozenman: Painting Displacement, Memory, and the Theater of the Self

Untangle Sails! oil on canvas, 28x28", 2012 sold

Somerville artist Alexandra Rozenman brings a rare combination of wit, vulnerability, and visual imagination to her paintings. In her Art at SCATV interview with Janet Cormier, recorded around her Right Turns exhibition at the SCATV Gallery, Rozenman discusses the roots of her art, her recurring symbols, her childhood in Moscow, and the deeply personal stories behind the works on display.

Rozenman’s artistic path began early. Born and raised in Moscow, she started drawing and painting at the age of five, encouraged by parents who took her talent seriously. In the interview, she recalls beginning with watercolors and pencils, sometimes painting on the backs of wallpaper when paper was scarce. That childhood world of resourcefulness, imagination, and fairy-tale imagery still echoes through her adult work.

Nostalgic Flowers (1) Oil on canvas, 16x20”, 2014, sold

A central theme in Rozenman’s paintings is the feeling of being misplaced. She speaks openly about being an immigrant, a misfit, and someone still searching for balance and belonging. Her painting Balance becomes one of the key moments in the interview: a strange, tender image of a figure trying to find stability between earth, sky, curtain, and moon.

Rozenman’s work is filled with recurring symbols that operate almost like characters in an unfolding private theater. Curtains, windows, moons, birds, buckets, strings, radiators, and landscapes appear again and again. She explains that curtains suggest stages and hidden worlds, buckets become measuring tools for time and experience, and radiators represent changes in temperature, both literal and emotional.

Conversation Oil on canvas, 16x20”, 2016, sold

Several paintings discussed in the interview reveal her gift for combining humor with melancholy. Blue Tea turns a familiar Russian cultural image into something impossible and playful. Nostalgic Herbs suggests memory, distance, hope, and unreachable places. Holding introduces a more haunting atmosphere, with a bird, a submerged head, and the sense of something precious that may have been lost.

The interview also points toward Rozenman’s broader artistic identity. Her work draws from folk art, Russian underground conceptualism, illustration, Jewish art, Russian and European stories, and the psychology of otherness. She also describes a long-running series in which she places herself in conversation with famous artists such as Matisse, Chagall, and Bruegel, turning art history into a living, personal dialogue.

After the War Oil on canvas, 30x40”, 2015, available

Another important milestone is Rozenman’s role as founder and teacher at Art School 99 in Somerville. She describes teaching as a serious creative practice of its own, one that invites students to work, think, experiment, and become more open through art. Her advice to aspiring artists is direct and memorable: if you want to make art, go do it. It is work, but meaningful work.

The full interview is worth watching not only for the paintings, but for the warmth and humor of the conversation itself. Rozenman speaks candidly about childhood, immigration, vulnerability, absurdity, artistic discipline, and the courage required to put personal images into the world.

Watch the complete Art at SCATV interview on YouTube: 

https://youtu.be/Am9TlGz4gdk?si=r5ZTnaKBmw5kKBDh