Megan Hazen -Artist

The 'Fragmented Memories' series is the basis of my Thesis work for my final year of undergraduate studies at OCAD University.  Here, I am using photographs I have taken in the past year of travel while spending my third year in Florence.  These images represent a memory, a specific experience and impression of a place that is all my own.  By taking these images and fragmenting them through tearing or cutting, I am diminishing their original purpose as the cornerstone of memory or whole image.  I am collaging the pieces and directly painting the collage itself, either in oil or acrylic paint.  This is representative of the way in which memory is unavoidably selective.  Our minds are in a constant state of changing, selecting, reducing, and remembering.  What results is a fragmented sense of an experience that is fleeting and constantly creating something new.  The act of painting for me is the experience- new memories and environmental factors that create new memories associated with the old ones.  My avenues for research thusfar include sociological and psychological readings on the reverse gaze, ethics of travel, psychogeography, and different factors that influence the structured way in which we experience a new place (whether we are aware of this or not).