Meaghan Haughian
My work is an act of storytelling that explores the dualities of life. I seek to capture the experiences and emotions that we share collectively as human beings but often experience in isolation. I create scenes and situations of architecturally and emotionally fragmented interiors. Like a diary entry, each piece questions and reflects, recounting the moments that form personal history and identity.
My practice results primarily in mixed media drawings on paper, though recently found materials such as wooden drawers have been included in, or formed the structure of, my work. I use paper as my surface for its simultaneous strength and fragility and for its ability to preserve, remembering marks even after they have been erased or painted over. Working with various wet and dry materials, including collage elements, I repeatedly add and remove information. These layers of fact and fiction are built up slowly and intuitively, resulting in worlds to explore and inhabit.
The majority of my pieces are small in scale to reflect their intimate subject matter: tales of fiction that are based in lived experience. These narratives are both subtle and direct, merging personal history with collective human experience in a complex and honest way. They explore serious subject matter with sincerity, humour and moments of irony. An amalgamation of disparate imagery, they merge love and loss, hope and despair, growth and decay, always willing to whisper their dreams and fears to those who take a step closer.
