Hester’s practice is a meditation on both her personal and our collective pasts. Throughout her works, Hester consistently acknowledges the seemingly opposing forces that build our daily lives—creating an atmosphere abounding with both elegy and rejuvenation.
The artist’s technique of painting on each substrate—paper, plexiglass and aluminum—goes far beyond conventional brushwork. Through a painstaking and physical process, she applies and removes acrylic paint with the use of sanders, hammers, routers and drills, in a continual process of building, breaking and rebuilding. Surprisingly, even the works on paper are sanded. Surfaces are mottled and textured, scraped and punctured. Layer upon layer of striated, thick colors dance astride more delicate patterned areas, created with collaged bits of metal leaf and complex cross-hatching marks. Yet, strikingly, the eye finds places of rest as colors and patterns conjoin harmoniously, and chaos and control share spaces.