Meghan Howland’s Flying Birds
Meghan Howland is an oil painter born in Haverhill, Massachusetts in 1985 and currently lives in Portland, Maine. She has a 2008 BFA from New Hampshire Institute of Art, Manchester, NH. Her work portrays situations close to reality, separated by touches of the surreal. What I like about Meghan’s work is that it combines classic fine-art techniques with a contemporary, surreal sensibility; portraying ambiguous situations with elements of dreams or even nightmares. It is always unexplained whether something is safe or dangerous, loving or hateful and this situation makes it up to the viewer to resolve what is happening, creating a boundless range of emotions and possibilities. Equally fascinating is her imagery of people being dazed by flying birds. Of course, culturally, one might flash upon Hitchcock’s iconic “The Birds” but instead of being terrorized by the birds, Howland’s figures seem to be the calm centre of a flurry of feathers.
