Michelle Hawran is a visual artist from Windsor, CT. Since graduating with a BFA from the University of Connecticut in 2016, Michelle splits her time between making dizzyingly colorful paintings in her at home studio, attempting to defeat the evil Instagram algorithm, and teaching art at the Windsor Art Center. "For such a bright body of work, my pieces are often born from anxiety. I have a fear of time—forgetting my past, my childhood, my traditions. I use my work to transform faded flashes of my past into instances of real life. I paint with dreamy, vibrant strokes to provide myself the joyful feeling of living in the moment. My body of work ranges from humorous characters to intimate moments of my past, but color is the continuous thread throughout, highlighting just how vibrant nostalgia can actually be."