Valerie Brennan interviews painter Mary Addison Hackett about her work and process.

Hackett notes: "It can begin with a memory, an object, an observation, something I read. Anything, really. When I was working abstractly, I would mentally store all of this information and approach a canvas using process as my starting point. Now that I'm working more representationally the hardest part is choosing what to paint. After that gets decided, I'm freer to navigate off course, but I still like having a tangible thing nearby as a reference. I vary my approach to painting and don't think too much about how I'm going to paint something. The paintings are as much about the physical process of painting and the inherent possibilities within that process to generate meaning, as they are about what's depicted on the canvas. Much of my process involves trying to get something right and yet in the end I'm not concerned with correctness. Sometimes I think I've willed a painting into being."