An Ancient Rootstock: Mayblossom Lester 2 Painting

My latest collection of paintings are a departure from usual routine. Instead of slowly building layers over many weeks, I am working on getting all of the paint on the canvas in the period of one day, creating a fresh & spontaneous aspect which stands as a record for that particular day. Simultaneously, I have been discovering my genealogy online and marveling at the vast expanse of history my ancestors have traversed in order to bring me to this place in time. I wonder what their relationships and experiences were like, and I am awed by their unusual names. The titles include the given names of an ancestral couple and their generational number to me. Painting is a practice that I engage with on a daily basis. I paint as a means to investigate relationships with color, form, and surface. My work is an exploration of an additive process, typically pouring various layers of my own formula of oil paint and wax on canvas and allowing the resulting colors and forms to interact in a somewhat random or natural interaction. I am constantly seeking how to give more to the image, the work, and to my understanding of harmony, both on the canvas and beyond. Born in Seattle, Washington as the eldest son of a minister my family moved a dozen times throughout childhood, ranging from Hawaii, Upstate New York, Florida and several points between. Upon discharge from the Navy, I enrolled at Humboldt State University on the extreme Northern California coast. This was home for the next 24 years, until in the spring of 2006 when my partner, Caterina, and I moved to Canterbury, in Southeastern England to study for our Master’s degrees. In the autumn of 2007 we moved to San Lucido, the small, Southern Italian, ancestral village of Caterina’s grandparents. While overlooking the Mediterranean Sea we finished writing our dissertations. Then upon graduation in 2008 we returned to the United States, and were lured to the beauty and mystery of the high desert of Santa Fe, New Mexico where I was the caretaker to the Audubon Society and we lived on the historical estate of the artist Randall Davey, at an elevation of 7,300 feet above sea level! Finally, in 2011 we were brought full circle back to the Humboldt area where I have a studio in an old logging truck garage in McKinleyville, California, and take daily walks along the Mad River and the ocean with my four legged companion, Rosie.