#caitlin hacket

If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are. - Baron de Montesquieu

 Catching up with the contemporary mythology of Caitlin Hackett. 

Tell us a little bit about the new large scale pieces you have in the works.  

I have a few new large pieces in the works, I haven’t had much of a chance to work on them lately because I’ve been doing so many group shows and smaller commission pieces.  Hopefully within the next few months I’ll complete the two large pieces I have in my studio! I have a piece called “Time in Captivity” that I am working on, it is 54” by about 60” I believe. I have actually been working on it for over a year because I’ve been so busy with small works I haven’t been able to finish it. It features a crouched human figure, wearing large bird skull mask, out of which branches and flowers grow and bloom, and hummingbirds are tangled in those branches. A wing comes down from his shoulder, sloping out of where his arm should be. All around him are bird cages, some empty, some containing fluttering hummingbirds. The hummingbirds are what give the piece it’s title, “time in captivity”, because in many cultures hummingbirds are considered to be symbols of Time, or the keepers of Time, they represent the ability to move through Time at will, back and forth, because of the way they can hover in the air. In this large piece they are held captive, caged and tied, some being devoured, because we are all desperate to keep Time or to stop Time, to go back to when we were young or to travel to an age we feel we would better fit in. It is the impossible dream to control what cannot be stopped, the powerful and intangible force that is time. 

I have one other very large piece in my studio, it is just in the early stages, parts of it haven’t even been inked in yet, and it does not have a title yet. The piece is 54” by 73” inches approximately, it features a human woman with the head and forelegs of a doe, sitting beneath a tangled flowering tree. The human figure is slightly larger than life size, to fit the head of the deer on her shoulders. Behind her a vast plain spreads out, and massive bees flit about the tree behind her. I don’t know when this piece will be done, I am so busy with commissions right now I haven’t had a chance to touch it in weeks, but I am truly looking forward to completing it. I love to work large, though they take a great deal of time to finish with all the detail work I put into them. It is challenging because to make a living I have to create smaller works, and since I do a great deal of group shows there are usually size limits for the pieces put in. I spend a lot of time creating tattoo designs and album covers for clients, which is fantastic work, but it doesn’t leave me much time to do my personal large scale work. Another difficulty is framing, which is very, very expensive for such big pieces, but since I work on paper it is necessary to protect them. Since they are so large, once they are framed they can really only be moved with cargo vans! 

Are works like “Roseate Dusk,” “Ghosts from the Flood Pain” and “The Last Gorgon” directly influenced by particular environmental disasters, or more subtle warnings?  

A little bit of both, these pieces were inspired in part by some of the natural disasters we’ve had in recent years; the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the resulting nuclear melt down, the destruction caused by hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in Indonesia, etc. However they are also meant to reflect on environmental issues in a more symbolic way, mainly the destruction of wetlands across the country. Swamps and marshes have long since held a kind of mystical position in the human psyche, a place of magic, horror and change, a secret lair the witches and wild folk, fairies and prehistoric monsters alike. This mythical appeal is perhaps due to how inhospitable they are for humans, we cannot easily build houses or roads within them, and marshes tend to be treacherous to traverse, full of hidden sink holes, shifting land masses and waterways, not to mention swarms of insects. It is also perhaps because of their strange denizens, muskrats and mosquitoes, alligators, snakes, bizarre amphibians, night herons and waterfowl, catfish and newts abound in the strange mixture of land and water. 

I also believe that wetlands have such a mystical pull because of their in-between nature; they are transient, ever shifting somewhere between land and water. There is something powerful about this ability to be uncharted, to change so swiftly with the changing weather. 

Marshes and swamps across the country are being filled in and developed, and we are losing many rare species as a result, and damaging our already vulnerable coastlines. The loss of marshes along the coast leaves towns and cities more open to damage from storms and hurricanes, as marshes act as a buffer to the sea in rough weather, taking in the excess water much better than say a city suburb can.  The loss of habitat has crippled many populations of migratory waterfowl, rare amphibians and fish, as well as unique mammals and crustaceans dependent on these fragile ecosystems. As it is we are losing marsh and swamp lands at an unprecedented rate as human development expands ever outward, and people demand ocean side and lakeside views for their new homes, without regard for what is lost. The bottom line is that there is money to be made filling in wetlands, and building new waterfront develops is great business if you don’t mind the threat of having your new development literally sink.  

These paintings also allude to all of these issues, both natures violence with water in the form of floods and hurricanes, and the violence of mankind against our fragile water ways. Water is a powerful and valuable resource, it is essential to life, and it holds a mystical potency in the collective human psyche. We want to live near water, we are drawn to it, we need it and desire it, and yet we destroy and pollute it in the process of drawing near. 

What kinds of projects and shows do we have to look forward to?  

I have a few group shows coming up this fall and winter, I have a piece up in a show “Pigment Deficient” right now at Jinxed in Philladelphia, that show is up until October. I have a piece up as part of the “Blood” show at WWA gallery open until September 22nd as well.

 I will be in a show at Fine Grime in London called “Milk”  opening November 4th, a group show with the PRISMA artist collective I’m a part of. I have another group show called “Glass, Thorn and Cinder”, an all female artist show that is fairy tale themed opening this November as well at 323 Gallery. I will be putting 4 to 5 pieces together for a small group show at Thinkspace Gallery opening February 9th, and another piece for “The Animal In Me”, another PRISMA collective show opening on February 15th at Subtext in San Diego. 

I also just completed illustrating the Lilac Fairy Book by Andrew Lang for Folio Society, that book should be coming out this  fall/winter.