Caitlin Hackett‘s art has a wistful beauty, but through its soft lines and watercolors, rivulets of blood intertwine with severed flesh, mutant eyes stare out of downy foreheads, and dripping talons hang from billowing sleeves. Hackett describes her art as an exploration of the human/animal dichotomy – is it natural, or manufactured, or both? With ink and watercolor, she describes how “human kind has created a planet of refugees; animals forced to flee ever farther from the insatiable encroachment of urban development, victims of a war for space which they cannot hope to win.” She depicts this war between soulless technology and the souls of nature in paintings like “Ghosts From the Flood Plain,” where a spectral fawn floats above murky industrial waters, bound by its own blood, as human creations belch filth from smokestacks in the distance. Hackett captures the ludicrous and wicked ways of humanity, we who would slaughter everything in our way to create room for dollar stores full of plastic waste. She also shows our similarities with the other creatures of the world, if only by merging our shapes and tying us together. The vulture perches with our arms above its’ prey; from our chests, twining roots emerge; and over our faces lay the skins of our oppressed fellow earthlings. She asks us, are we human on the inside, animal on the outside? Is our flesh all that binds us to one another? After the jump, contemplate this collection of Caitlin Hackett’s work…
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