Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/433799
Todd Wilkinson rt & Etc. A P lunging into the pure visual serenity of a New England autumn, Grant Hacking looks toward the expanding horizon of his career. He talks aloud about his desire to paint more megafauna in the American West, to challenge himself with explorations of new landscapes, and to steal away just one more day in the sugar-maple hardwoods before the burning colors dissolve away. Time, Hacking sometimes feels, is fleeting. Wherever he goes, it's the diaphanous half-light that flows through his workâthe kind of impermanent ether you see only momentarily at the entrances and exits of dreams. Hacking has spent half his life building a reputation as a keen interpreter of nature, best known for his depictions of big-game animals and birds. The visual language he communicates, however, was imprinted upon him in another place and time, though it's universally recognizable to those who carry rod and reel or trigger and barrel. The origins reside far away from America and today seem like reverie. W hen Hacking sits down with his two daughters and tries to explain how his childhood differed from theirs, the challenges of translating memories from southern Africa invariably turn on a question: "Well, girls, where do I begin?" Should the stories commence with the day that a fickle black mamba nearly bit Hacking and his brother or Grant Hacking's art is rooted in wildest Africa, but his influences are all over the map. DUST OF TIME