Theresa Hackett | The Scenic Route
December 13 - February 1, 2025
High Noon is pleased to present Theresa Hackett’s third exhibition with the gallery, The Scenic Route. Building on her past two exhibitions that referenced landscape, The Scenic Route explores environmental themes and their relationship to the history of painting to address contemporary issues affecting the natural world and humanity’s connection to it.
A procession of mid-sized works on panel wrap from the back of the gallery to the front, creating a non-linear narrative of fictional vignettes with various abstracted landscapes. The mechanisms of these paintings become a metaphor for the concept of looking as both a passive and participatory activity. Upon first viewing, the works appear to be painted on stretched canvas rather than a piece of plywood. However, with a prolonged look, drawn lines reveal themselves to be carved marks and soft washes are actually a sanded surface.
The interplay between found and applied materials informs the artwork on multiple levels creating a push and pull of awareness. Hackett’s use of color and gestural form reflects a lineage reminiscent of Fauvist painters like Edvard Munch and André Derain, whose work blurred the lines between representation and emotional truth. She explains, “Once I have established a consistency, acknowledged its physical boundaries, and set up the parameters for instability, all the possibilities open up.”
Each scene is framed in a ghostly, ephemeral yellow, creating a window into the landscape. In Hans Belting’s Florence & Baghdad: Renaissance Art and Arab Science, he notes that “Windows, and the view from them are inseparably linked in Western culture.” In Hackett’s work, this inviting compositional device quickly betrays the casual viewer, as her consistent defiance of spatial logic demands a slow deliberation and an abandonment of the human gaze as the determinate marker of perception. This at-arms-length viewing experience allows for the projection of personal narratives, creating a visual reciprocity between the maker (painter) and the observer which expands the concept of time.
Opposite the sequence of works on panel is a monumental 12-foot painting on stretched dropcloth. Entitled Wandering (2023), the expansive work, while using the same visual language and compositional devices, is straightforward and guttural in its approach, underscoring the physicality inherent to Hackett’s practice. For Hackett, the utilitarian nature of the drop cloth connects back to her twenties spent sailing around the world. The urgency of paint staining a raw surface is akin to how the canvas responds to the unpredictability of nature.
The Scenic Route is a simmering and somewhat cautionary tale about visual perception as an unreliable narrator. It encourages viewers to reconsider their relationship with landscapes—both real and imagined. By engaging with the layers of Hackett’s work, we are prompted to question the inherent biases and assumptions that come with observation. Hackett invites us to reflect on how our interpretations of landscapes are not merely passive observations but active engagements with the complexities of our world and the ways we choose to navigate our existence within it.
Theresa Hackett received her BFA from College of Creative Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara and her MFA at Hunter College, New York. She has participated in over 100 group shows including The Weatherspoon Art Museum, Art, Design & Architecture Museum, UCSB, Santa Barbara, Ca., Contemporary Art Museum Baltimore, The Islip Museum and video screenings at The Parish Art Museum and Mass MoCA. She is a twice recipient of the Pollock Krasner Grant, a New York Foundation Grant, and Joan Mitchell award nominee. Current residencies include the Siena Art Institute, Siena, Italy; the Bogliasco Foundation, Genoa, Italy; and MacDowell Residency, New York, NY. Her work has been reviewed in Hyperallergic, Art in America, Artnet, The New York Times, The American Scholar, Two Coats of Paint, and Zing Magazine amongst other publications.
