Lester Hunter Acrylic Painter
Lester Hunter (Les.H) lives in Thompson, Manitoba. He was born and raised in Leaf Rapids a small town in northwest Manitoba about 1,000km north of Winnipeg along the Churchill river. He spent some time in a small community headed towards South Indian Lake but considers Thompson his home now. Growing up on the reservation of Leaf Rapids, there was not much to do and not many materials available to create artwork with, so he would pick up random stones and wood to use for carving, favouring graphite, and granite stone. Nature and landscapes bring Lester the most inspiration to paint. He also finds himself very creative when he looks at stones. Often, he finds himself pulling out his portfolio of old sketches, and looking at them to come up with new ideas.
As a child, Lester became interested in art while watching the animations from cartoons on TV like “Hercules” with his older brother. It is in these moments that he slowly became a self-taught artist, his greatest inspiration and direction constantly coming from his older brother. His brother started to show him how to paint at a young age and he became inspired with the colours and textures of acrylic paint. One of the many things his brother taught him when working with paint was how to master mixing properly until the colour of the paint is smooth to look at.
Lester’s preferred medium is acrylic paint, but he has worked with many different art styles including carving out of wood, carving out of stone, making chokers, belts, working with leather, dream catchers, and pencil sketching. He tends to favour acrylic paint because of how fast it can dry and uses pine paint brushes, to get the look he is happy with. His usual supply source is from the local Thompson Walmart.
For a time, Lester was incarcerated at the Headingley Correctional Centre in Winnipeg. When he was there, he started to teach people about the outlet of painting and facilitated creating a large mural on the jail wall that he hopes will continue to inspire people that are there. Many of Lester’s paintings can be found in the Headingley teaching room to this day.
Lester has been known to experiment with mixing mediums including creating a stone carving and an acrylic painting an putting the stone carving on the painting. Drawing meaning and inspiration from the town mural on the Princeton towers, his biggest dream would be to create a big mural in Thompson that can have a lasting effect on others.
