Postcards from the Wasteland

Postcards from the Wasteland reexamines the visual legacy of the American West by painting it through the irradiated landscape of Fallout: New Vegas. Each painting in this series follows the path of the Courier, not as a hero of frontier legend, but as a witness to the fallout of economic, cultural, and literal trappings of nostalgia. 

Set against the game’s backdrop of the Mojave’s vast and quiet beauty, these works draw from the visual language of Western landscape painting. The familiar tropes of lone wanderer, golden horizons, endless terrain are documented but their romanticism is survived only by the familiarity of the genre. What remains are derelict casinos, burned highways, city ruins, and the strange stillness of worlds destroyed and rebuilt.

By using in-game locations to echo real American geography, the series explores how accelerated capitalism and warfare exist beneath the surface of every pastoral myth. What was once portrayed as wild and free is revealed here as privatized, weaponized, and ultimately irradiated yet somehow, still beautiful. The framing of the paintings as postcards reminisce on sending and receiving a message to save a memory. This format provides a literal and analogue memory card that comes from a future-past not yet lived. The ephemeral quality of the postcard is mortality manifest, again reminding us of the remaining hours we have. The sands of time, in this case, are irradiated sands from the Mojave.  Locations in-game: 

Doc Mitchell’s house
Goodsprings
HELIOS one
Sloan
Vault 22
The Strip
Caesar’s Tent
Hoover Dam