T.W. Wood Gallery The T.W. Wood Gallery presents “Wendy Hackett-Morgen,” through Nov. 18, at the Center for Arts and Learning, 46 Barre St. in Montpelier. Hours are noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; admission is free; call 802-262-6035, or go online to
www.twwoodgallery.orgAlmost life size, the cream-colored horse stepping with the gait of his breed fills his 6-foot by 7-foot canvas. In the artist’s bold broad brushstrokes, we see his contours and depth, the movement of his legs, but we also see through him. His indistinct face is turned toward us as he moves on.
Maurice — a Tennessee Walking Horse, whose full name was Maurice the Chevalier — was one of artist Wendy Hackett-Morgen’s horses.
“Walking Horse” is among the paintings in the solo exhibition by Wendy Hackett-Morgen at Montpelier’s T.W. Wood Gallery. Hackett-Morgan, who lived in Montpelier, died in 2018. The exhibition includes some 60 of her works.
Hackett-Morgen’s work borders realism and abstraction, her figurative abstract works often relating to horses. A selection of her large format oil paintings, 6 feet by 6 feet or so, are featured in the Nuquist Gallery including “Walking Horse” and other equine connected pieces and expressive nearly full-size nudes.
A broad range of her work extends the full length of the Contemporary Hallway Gallery — paintings, drawings, collage. They span realistic drawings, including of a beloved cat under newspaper crossword puzzle, to compelling abstracts. Matisse was Hackett-Morgan’s favorite artist, and one may find hints of that preference in the show.
“Her paintings are bold and striking. Her incredible use of color and form is kind of intoxicating,” Sabrina Fadial, the Wood’s executive director, said, while standing amidst the large canvasses with their reds, oranges and golds, and a spectacular abstracted phoenix in startling purple and yellow.
“There is lots of passion, lots of emotion and experimentation,” Fadial said. “You can see her energy. She wasn’t sitting there calmly painting. You can tell that she was physically involved in the application of paint. Her paintings are visceral because of that, because of the mark making and the expressive speed at which some of this is coming out.”
Hackett-Morgen lived in Montpelier for more than a decade, having moved here from New York’s Hudson River Valley in 2004 with her husband Michael Morgenbesser.
Drawn to art from her youth, Morgen-Hackett was encouraged by a high school mentor and studied art at State University of New York at New Paltz.
A singer, Hackett-Morgen performed with Morgenbesser in a duo in New York City’s Greenwich Village for over 20 years. Morgenbesser noted that they performed literally thousands of times at The Black Fence, a Bleecker Street mainstay. Hackett-Morgen also played bass and sang lead for their rock band Stormfront.
“Wendy was an unusual person. She could be comfortable on stage, but was not comfortable in most public circumstances,” Morgenbesser said.
Twenty-five years after her undergraduate art education, Hackett-Morgen returned to art school at SUNY New Paltz. Her master of fine arts studies proved pivotal to a new stage of her artwork.
Relocating to the New Paltz area from the city provided the couple with opportunity to have horses.
“They were her inspiration. She had that connection with animals in general — horses and cats especially, a very deep connection,” said Morgenbesser.
When Morgenbesser’s career brought them to Montpelier, horses came, too.
Real horses — Maurice, Fire, Sun, and a big Clydesdale named Ernie, whom they met at a fair — are in the exhibition, but not as subjects of portraits. Instead, they may evoke an emotional response.
“Fire Horse,” in the Nuquist Gallery, explodes out of the darkness. The gold of his head, mane and chest radiates. Slightly rearing, he is spirited and something of a spirit.
The high energy of “Fire Horse” contrasts with the reassuring calm of a grazing horse in the Hallway Gallery. Also on a large scale, this brown horse with comforting curves is surrounded by green. We see him from the tail end.
In the large-scale paintings of Hackett-Morgen’s “Union” series, she turns to the human figure, conveying passion and intimacy.
The show includes one self-portrait of the artist. Her dark hair is swept behind her ear, we see her in three-quarter view. She is looking off at something which the viewer can’t see.
T.W. Wood Gallery The T.W. Wood Gallery presents “Wendy Hackett-Morgen,” through Nov. 18, at the Center for Arts and Learning, 46 Barre St. in Montpelier. Hours are noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; admission is free; call 802-262-6035, or go online to www.twwoodgallery.org
