Hester Lessard—painter

Playing with Light and Layers

Hester Lessard’s artistic journey straddles six decades and defies straight lines. In the 1960s and 70s, she painted landscapes and interiors, first in New York City, where she grew up, and then in rural Nova Scotia, where she moved at age nineteen in response to American involvement in the Vietnam war.

After over a decade of painting and exhibiting while living a classic back-to-the-land lifestyle in Nova Scotia, Hester changed direction, attended law school in Halifax, and embarked on a 27-year academic legal career, eventually teaching law at the University of Victoria.

As retirement beckoned, Hester felt the pull of the rural life she’d left long ago and moved to Denman Island. She also returned to art and her old subject matter: landscapes. But something didn’t feel right. “I was no longer the same person. To be honest, I was boring myself.” She started exploring abstract approaches.

Hester’s metamorphosis into an abstract painter evolved further when she began using cold wax medium, a soft, malleable, matte-finish substance that combines with oil paint.

“Wax medium’s main attraction for me is how it gets rid of the brush,” says Hester. Freed from the control imposed by the brush, she applies medium with a variety of instruments—squeegees, crumpled wax paper, a credit card, brayers. “You can dab it, you can make texture, and you can create three or four layers and scratch down through the layers.”

Hester’s abstract painting shares certain qualities with her landscapes. “My period as a figurative painter was very much preoccupied with the quality of the light, and that’s still central to my art. Much abstract art operates in a shallow plane and avoids creating the illusion of depth. But once you start playing with light, that changes.”

Contact: hlessard@uvic.ca

See Hester’s work on Denman: Contact the artist at hlessard@uvic.ca to set up an appointment at her Denman studio.