We are delighted to share that VoyageATL has featured Alecse, founder of Myretroposter and creator of the Artful Travels series, in its Hidden Gems Series.
The interview explores Alecse’s journey from growing up in an artistic family to exhibiting paintings in New York and Paris, building businesses, running a surf resort in Sri Lanka, and eventually returning to a full artistic path through Myretroposter.
It also offers a closer look at his creative process, his relationship with travel, the role of luck in life and business, and the idea behind what he calls Soft Focus.
MORE THAN A TRAVEL POSTER
Travel posters have traditionally celebrated destinations through iconic views, landmarks, and idealised compositions. Alecse’s work is inspired by that tradition, but it also tries to take it somewhere more personal.
At the heart of his approach is a simple question: how do we actually remember a place?
Most of us do not carry photographic memories. We remember fragments, colours, silhouettes, light, atmosphere, and emotion. The mind then reconnects those elements and turns them into something that feels whole.
This is one of the ideas behind Alecse’s work as a French travel poster artist. His posters are not meant to reproduce reality with perfect accuracy. They are designed to evoke the emotional imprint a place leaves behind.
THE SOFT FOCUS APPROACH
Soft Focus is not simply a visual effect. It is an artistic intention.
Alecse’s process blends photography, drawing, and painting until the final image is no longer fully one thing or another. It sits somewhere between reality and memory, between observation and interpretation.
Blur, light, simplified forms, and halftone textures all play a role in this approach. They leave space for the viewer to enter the image, choose their own focus, and reconnect with a personal memory or imagined destination.
In that sense, the artwork is not completely fixed. It remains open. The viewer becomes part of the image.
WHY THIS MATTERS TODAY
In the VoyageATL interview, Alecse also reflects on the challenges of building an artistic business in a changing visual landscape.
We now live in a world where images can be produced instantly and in enormous quantities. This makes originality, authorship, and intention even more important.
Rather than trying to compete with volume, Alecse continues to focus on artworks rooted in real places, personal experience, and a distinctive visual language developed over many years.
All Artful Travels posters are published as limited editions, with several sizes available so that collectors can choose an artwork that fits both their space and their budget.
A JOURNEY STILL IN PROGRESS
Today, the Artful Travels collection includes more than 1,300 artworks covering over 130 countries. Alecse’s long term ambition remains to create at least one poster for every country in the world.
It is an ongoing project that continues to inspire new journeys, new discoveries, and new artworks.
For many collectors, the collection has become a way to build personal walls of travel, bringing together places they have lived in, visited, loved, or still dream of discovering.
If you would like to learn more about Alecse’s journey, his creative philosophy, and the story behind Myretroposter, you can read the full interview on VoyageATL.
