The Irish Times, Wednesday, February 12, 2003

 

Excerpt from BEING OFFERED A BREATHING SPACE

 

 

'At first glance you might think that Hackett’s paintings are loose, gestural abstracts, pure and simple. Certainly she delights in the free play of layered, overlapping colour glazes, but there is a delicacy and a precision to her pictures that are unmistakable while not at all detracting from their air of spontaneity and freedom. A big painting such as Shoreline is a formidable piece of work. In her titles she is very specific about the sources for each image. These vary, but it is no surprise that garden and natural settings keep cropping up, given her liking for free-flowing, organic forms and vegetative and floral colours. There is also her consistent practice of composing her paintings around central clusters of activity. Each painting, that is to say, is a bit like a flower, concentrated in a central bloom, and each is persuasive, meditative.'

 

Aidan Dunne