Biography
Hester has a BA(hons) Illustration from Harrow School of Art & Design and has specialised in printmaking since 1994. She lives in the Yorkshire Dales National Park and has a studio with a view of Penyghent. Hester is a member of Leeds Fine Artists, Printmakers Circle and Ålgården Studios in Sweden where she visits annually to develop her technique and to work on projects. Awards include an Extending Practice Award from Chrysalis Arts that allowed her to work with the Mercer Gallery, British Museum and Yorkshire Museum creating prints inspired by the Vale of York Viking Treasure Hoard. She has been shortlisted twice for the New Lights Prize Exhibition. She recently collaborated with the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes on a funded project celebrating the life and work of Marie Hartley MBE: writer, artist and founder of the museum. After reprinting the museum’s extensive collection of Hartley’s wood engraving blocks for their archives, Hester created a new body of work inspired by the places written about in the books that Hartley collaborated on with Ella Pontefract which explored the ecology, conservation and landscape of the Yorkshire Dales and was exhibited in the exhibition View From the Fells: In the Footsteps of Marie Hartley. Information about the project can be seen HERE Hester's ongoing project, Within These Walls, is currently touring museums and galleries and includes her large-scale print installation created for a field-barn during the 2017 Grassington Festival. The five 4-metre long hand-printed hangings celebrate the UK’s endangered meadows. Hester has developed further work that she hopes will draw attention to the importance of species-rich meadows not only in agriculture & cultural history but as a valuable ecosystem supporting a wide variety of species including some of our rarer ground nesting birds. Find out more about Within These Walls HERE Click HERE to see a more detailed cv. Artist’s Statement My printmaking is informed by my surroundings and wherever I am I seek out evidence of the natural world that is particular to that environment. I have spent most of my working life living in rural places and am fascinated by the rhythms and cycles that occur within nature. Over the past few years, my work has become increasingly about our relationship with the countryside and I seek to focus people’s attention on some of our more fragile habitats and threatened wildlife species. As a keen fellrunner, I am often in wilder less visited locations and am outdoors in all weathers. The physicality of running combined with the solitude and necessary awareness of my immediate environment creates a visceral connection with the landscape that lasts long after I have returned to the studio. Revisiting the same areas repeatedly provides me with the opportunity to catch a glimpse of some of the more elusive birds and animals that inhabit these environments. It is these chance encounters that I find most exciting and that will often be translated into print. I carry a battered old camera and take photos to use for reference, sketching and writing notes to distil ideas. I specialise in intaglio collagraph and by using multiple plates, painted textures and intricate cutting in my printmaking I aim to accentuate the patterns and celebrate the colours found within the natural world. I have recently also rekindled my love of linocutting and have created a series of monochrome images inspired by meadows. This has been a challenging and enjoyable counterpoint to my textural collagraphs. |