Abby Hauser is a multidisciplinary artist and painter based in Boone, NC. She is currently a BFA Studio Art candidate at Appalachian State University with a concentration in painting and drawing. Her work explores themes of memory, keepsakes, and human experience, drawing inspiration from her close relationship with her five younger sisters. Hauser is interested in how identity can be expressed through belongings and how they reveal humanity's collective relationship with the passage of time. Her work has been included in the juried student exhibition- Art & Design Expo at Appalachian State three times, along with Leading Legacy at the Looking Glass Gallery and The Tiny Show. Her piece, Portrait of Lily is featured in the Plemmons Student Union permanent collection. Her current body of work focuses on ‘vessels of memory’ and explores how humanity can be represented without figure, specifically through personal interior spaces and keepsakes.

Statement

My work explores memory and how it can be experienced through objects and places. I am interested in how personal spaces and our belongings accumulate meaning over time, becoming repositories for memory. Working primarily in oil on large-scale canvases, I paint personal interiors, keepsakes, and landscapes drawn from my childhood home and places of meaning in my life. The objects and spaces in my paintings are not simply representations, they act as witnesses. They have absorbed years of routine and forgotten moments. In their stillness, they come alive, holding traces of presence even in absence, emphasizing how memory cannot be physically revisited, only reconstructed in the mind. I digitally manipulate my references in Photoshop before translating them into paint, altering lighting and composition to create dreamlike scenes. Influenced by surrealism and the atmosphere of overcast landscapes, I use unnatural color palettes, dramatic lighting, bold under-paintings, and varied paint thickness to produce an ephemeral, memory-like quality. In paintings of barren beaches and empty rooms, the altered compositions and visible layers mirror the instability of recollection.

As my practice evolves, I continue experimenting with more dynamic compositions, varying paint application, and allowing the underpainting to emerge through the surface to heighten the sense of nostalgia within the work. My art remains rooted in the belief that spaces and objects carry emotional residue long after moments have passed. Through my paintings, I attempt to preserve these moments, depicting absence and giving form to the intangible experience of remembering and forgetting.