Hannah Kaspar - 'Memory is a Ghost Part III'

 

Hannah Kaspar is an American artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She was born in Ossining, NY in 1981 and recieved a BFA in painting from Tyler School of Art in 2003 and also from Glasgow School of Art, four years later.

Created in the mediums of oil, acrylic, canvas collage on woodboard and housepaint, this piece of work by Kaspar focuses on memories that fade away. Her work also focuses a great deal on architecture and imagined interiors.

The first layer of the image appears to have been a painting of a room, possibly a room that she remembers from her past or that she has imagined. The colours she used are quite muted, which suggests that she has not seen or invisaged for quite some time and is finding it difficult to remember it vividly. The next layers is black acrylic, covering parts of the first image in a swirly pattern. This represents the memories that Kaspar is trying to convey fading slowly or clouding over and becoming less obvious. Over the top of this layer, in slightly more solid and bright colours and at the middle-bottom,  is some small house-hold objects (a chair, a record player, curtains). The fact that the colours are different suggests that these are the items that she remembers most vividly.

Kaspar describes her work as ‘historical fiction, a fantastical way of exploring her personal history’.