Light has always played a significant role in Katherine Hester’s art. The way it plays across the flank of a horse, the shadows it creates along the contours of someone’s face, the dying light of day as the sun sets over a landscape. In whatever form it may come, illumination has always been her greatest muse. “Telling a story with light in my paintings is my ultimate goal,” she says.
But just as the light changes, so does the source of creativity for an artist’s work. When Hester and her family relocated from Mount Pleasant to Pinopolis, South Carolina, she found her creativity sparked in another way—but first, it had to be brought into the light of day. “One day while rummaging around the attic of our mid-1800s home, I discovered a stack of antique books,” says Hester. “The spines and covers were ruined, but a quick check inside indicated that these relics dated back to the early 1800s, just like the house. Thumbing through them, it was clear to me that these books were more useful for their parts than whole.”
Being the curious sort, Hester began experimenting with various methods to use the weathered pages in portrait collages. “The patina of one page, coupled with the font of another page, combined with the heavy typeface of a third page all merged with a purpose,” she says. “It was gratifying to discover that angling the lines of prose in a certain way created a hairline, cheekbone or jawline. At last came the realization that the subject matter of a given page in just the right spot created a fun game of hide-and-seek for the keen observer, a literal tongue-in-cheek statement.”
Personal statement or social commentary, each of them certainly has something to say. Hester’s models for her multimedia pieces are mostly women who “have a fierce look to them,” she says. “Together with a modern color palette, the overall impression would be incongruent were it not for the antique vellum’s reminder that every woman is a literal amalgamation of her thoughts, the books she has read, the words she speaks and the words that are spoken to her. Her character is uncovered through a lifetime of pages bound together to create a voice of memories.”
As her work has evolved, so have the items that have found their way into Hester’s multimedia representations of people and their complexities. More than just the antique pages of books that were once well on their way to becoming dust, she incorporates other repurposed items, with music memorabilia being the first reiteration of the medium. “Music posters, J-cards from cassette tapes and concert tickets were the medley that collided to create a nostalgic, if sometimes gritty, overall impression,” Hester says. “I’ve also enjoyed creating commissioned portrait collages that include important aspects of the client’s life, like travel destinations and noteworthy experiences that they wish to memorialize in a unique and unexpected way. A patchwork of sentimental trinkets like ticket stubs to the Louvre, restaurant receipts, maps of Parisian arrondissements and plane tickets become a stylish French woman. Prose from Shakespeare, ticket stubs from St. Paul’s and pub menus transform into a refined English lady. Experimenting in this way with different objects and keepsakes has been a rewarding challenge. But most of all, it has been fun. I love to imagine my ‘vellum ladies’ or ‘parchment princesses’ on display in homes, bringing added layers of interest to the lives of families and penning another chapter of the book that is life.”
Another chapter of Hester’s life and work is the time she spends with her brush dipped in watercolors. It is here that light finds its greatest stage for the artist, expressed in her use of pigments and the saturation of colors that that flows from mind’s eye to paper. And while she finds no shortage of subjects to paint in the landscape around her, Hester’s imagination is especially drawn to the movement of horses. “I have owned and ridden horses from the time I was a child,” she notes. “I teach an adult watercolor class, and this class inspired me to pick up my old watercolor set to paint for myself. I love the way that light falls on racing horses. The light bounces off the surface of the ground and reflects on the underside and muscles of the horses as they move, making interesting shapes.”
As studied as her multimedia and watercolors tend to be, there is no time for such exactitude in Hester’s latest foray into her creativity: painting in real time at weddings. “I was recently asked to do a live wedding painting for a beautiful couple here in Charleston, Morgan Hill and Nicholas Warden,” says Hester. “I thoroughly enjoyed painting and talking to guests as I worked through the process. It was a wonderful event and inspired me to pursue more of these commissions.”
As stressful as it could be, Hester seems to draw creative drive from the energy of the people around her. Before the day of the actual wedding, she likes to do a quick watercolor painting of the reception site, complete with a large mat for guests to sign with their names and well wishes for the couple, replacing the standard guest book. “Weddings are such a happy time, and including live art adds a touch of magic to the day,” says Hester.
It’s another form of light—the illumination of joy that plays across the couple’s faces as they exchange vows and take their first steps toward their future together. As she paints, Hester uses her talent for finding those shapes, those shadows, those movements that absorb or bounce the light to capture a moment in time that will soon be nothing more than a memory. *
Liesel Schmidt lives in Navarre, Florida, and works as a freelance writer for local and regional magazines. She is also a web content writer and book editor. Follow her at X at @laswrites or download her novels, Coming Home to You, The Secret of Us and Life Without You, at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.
