KERRIE LESTER
Sydney, Australia | 1953–2016
Kerrie Lester was an Australian painter, portraitist and mixed-media artist renowned for her distinctive, highly individual style. Born in Sydney in 1953, she studied fine art at the National Art School and Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education between 1971 and 1975. She held her first solo exhibition in 1976, beginning a career that would span four decades.
Lester developed an immediately recognisable visual language combining painting and drawing with hand stitching and other textural elements. Her colourful, often playful compositions explored portraits and scenes from everyday life, balancing humour and observation with an underlying seriousness. Her stitched works in particular blurred the traditional boundaries between painting, drawing and textile art.
Portraiture became an important part of Lester's career. She was selected as a finalist in the Archibald Prize sixteen times and in 1998 won the Packing Room Prize for Self-Portrait as a Bridesmaid. She was also a nine-time finalist in the Portia Geach Memorial Award and exhibited regularly in the Wynne and Sulman Prize exhibitions.
Lester portrayed many notable Australians. The National Portrait Gallery holds works by her depicting figures including filmmaker and producer Margaret Fink, surgeon and humanitarian Fred Hollows, musician James Morrison and Olympic champion Cathy Freeman. Her portrait of Freeman was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in 1999.
In 2011, Lester received another major recognition when she won the Mosman Art Prize for 'Out on a Limb'. The work exemplified the warmth, humour and individuality for which her paintings had become known.
Working across painting, portraiture, printmaking, collage and sculpture, Lester established a distinctive place in contemporary Australian art. Her combination of vivid colour, expressive line, stitched surfaces and gently humorous observations made her work instantly recognisable. She continued working as an artist until her death in Sydney in 2016.
