Biography
Lynette Haggard is an abstract artist who makes paintings, drawings, assemblage and objects. Her work is constructed with lush color, sweeping marks, shapes and forms that sometimes abut or nest within one another.
Recent group exhibitions include Extravagant Chemistry, Anatomies of Painting at the Bristol (RI) Art Museum, In Praise of Form at the Piano Craft Gallery (Boston) and Women in Abstraction, New Art Center (MA).
Born in Natick, Massachusetts, she earned her BFA from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia (formerly Philadelphia College of Art). Haggard is the recipient of a Virginia Center for Creative Arts Fellowship, and her work is featured on Geoform.net, a global, scholarly resource and curatorial project.
Photo: Stephanie Jasieniecki
Haggard has exhibited widely in galleries and museums throughout the US. Venues include: Amy Simon Fine Art (CT), R&F Handmade Paints Gallery (NY), Art Basel Miami, Conrad Wilde Gallery (Tucson), The Saco Museum, New Hampshire Institute of Art, The Painting Center (NYC), Site Brooklyn Gallery, and in Massachusetts: 13FOREST Gallery, The Schoolhouse Gallery, Attleboro Museum, The Art Complex Museum, Danforth Museum, Provincetown Art Museum, and The Copley Society.
Haggard’s work is in many collections including The New Britain Museum of American Art, Emerson Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, R&F Handmade Paints, and private collections in the US and abroad.
My paintings balance experimentation and improvisation with lush color, materials and processes. I investigate abstraction without the need for a narrative or specific reference. Chunky forms and gestural strokes mingle with shards and fragments of color, sometimes nesting within or abutting one another. Tension and content arise from the positioning of marks, shape and color. Working like this can be gritty and awkward. It also yields powerful, tender and intimate discoveries as the work develops.
I have lived on a river for thirty years. Each day I renew connections to the natural world — its rhythms and patterns, wildlife, organisms, systems and mysteries. Being a witness to and participant in the ecosystem fortifies my artistic practice and the choices I make as an artist.