J ean Lester works out of her home and studio in Ester, Alaska, just outside of Fairbanks. She studied painting in San Francisco after leaving her native Canada, and has lived and painted in Alaska since 1970. She is well known for her images of flowers, people and landscapes done in her own intuitive impressionistic style, and her paintings hang in private collections in the United States, Japan, Switzerland and Canada.
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Artist Statement:
I've painted off and on all my life. It is what I do, not what I talk about. Every time I start a painting it tuns out differently than what I had intended, sometimes for the better. In the last few years, I have started seeing flowers and landscapes as just form...patches of colour and light, movement and balance. To paraphrase Proust "there are no new landscapes, only new perspectives." I like to see my artistic skillmorph as I try to look at everything I see from a different perspective and accept the validity of that vision.
– Jean Lester, December 2007
 Lester is also known for her unique oral history books about notable Alaskans, in which she presents their life stories, told in their own words, along with her sensitive portraits in oils and pastels. Faces of Alaska: Voices Across the State, from the University of Alaska Press, is the third and final in a series that includes Faces of Alaska and Faces of Alaska from Barrow to Wrangell.
Lester is currently working with others on an oral history of the elder Alaska Native pilots who helped make aviation history. This project will culminate in a book and curriculum for middle schools in both rural and urban Alaska.
Her work can be seen by appointment at her gallery in Ester and on her website.
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