Hester Van Wijngaarden presents herself neither as a painter or an artist, but as a woman who paints, an expression reflecting two dimensions of life that nourish her.

After studying History of Art in Leiden, Holland for two years, Hester is accepted to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Utrecht in 1982.

But shortly after life led her to settle in the Gers, France, and it was in this new home that she set out on the road to what her painting is today. She moved towards a figurative painting style and from her first exhibition in Auch, at the age of 25, she began to sell her works.

Hester Van Wijngaarden paints portraits, landscapes and some animals. But it was in this place, the Gers, impressed by the vision of bullfighting scenes, that the bull imposed itself on her as a subject. It allowed her to find brushstrokes corresponding to a vital force which resides in her and, which seeks to express itself. Responding to this purely instinctive approach, her painting grew; literally, the format expanded. Her work asserted itself: more technical, her painting emerged from a haze, the gesture became more confident and the lines more defined. The beast was there, immense and present.

What also characterizes her paintings is a very sober colour palette. She plays with black, white, grey...some earthy tones too, ochre...shadows. Despite the strength of her subjects, the intuitive touch remains, fine and very controlled.

Now Hester lives and works in the Lot where she still favours the subjects that come to her. The bull is still there, but it has been joined by the elephant and the horse.

She will later come to understand that these animals correspond to archetypes, but she lives and breaths her painting, without intellectualizing it. For her, they remain the supporting framework, which allows her to enter into a primitive state. Ancestral figures, which are present in our unconscious, and in their own way embody strength, power, vigour, balance and sensuality. And in the eye of both the painter and the viewer, their curves and reliefs are remarkable for the way they catch the light.

Taurus...force of fire in movement, to which the horse responds, with a powerful fluidity, and the elephant, its mass, its balance, its link to the elements of earth and water.

Far from repetition, she is faithful to these subjects, so that each time the journey is made more in depth. Hester Van Wijngaarden's paintings are a living material, they set telluric forces to music and give form to an original material. Through this, Hester seeks to be as close as possible to her own nature, and thereby to nature. This is conscious research, to which some people remain indifferent.

This relationship to music seems essential for the artist, through rhythms, play and silences, back and forth in front of the painting, observations, pauses, instinctive continuation of the work. Respecting silences and emptiness...it is indeed with great delicacy that Hester Van Wijngaarden's brush comes to mark the canvas for the first time. For her, painting is not regurgitating, nor exorcising, anything. She refuses this because "painting is not a waste, but a way to circulate energy."

The framing is also a key element in the strength of her paintings. These are not portraits of animals, no...but fragments of portraits; huge fragments, which decide a reality. The real beginning is in the composition, the framing that will bring out the strongest expression, in order to proceed as simply as possible. And then, often, the first strokes of the brush are for the eye, the gaze of the animal. All the energy does not come out at the beginning...the exploration of this space is done with caution, and respect for the canvas… “If you rush through everything at once, you haven’t meditated on the empty canvas enough.”

However, one of the most important aspects remains the movement. Paintings tend to find a shadow/light balance, but this state never freezes...movement brings about a story, a story that comes to deceive reality...

“Painting refines our view of the world, piercing more easily, sharpening sensitivity. The gaze with the painting is an inner gaze, on the world and on the painting itself. It is a way of slowing down, of stretching time, which becomes very elastic, a way of finding slowness and moving onto another plane. Rather than running through life, we can focus on it, play with it...Painting is a meditative journey. ”

A life lesson? No, just a matured spontaneity that makes us understand how fine touches are capable of generating great forces...