Newell, Lester
Artist Statement
Many years ago I found a small moose antler on my parents homestead. When I looked at it closely, I noticed there was a Lynx getting ready to pounce from a thicket of willows inside of that antler. After many hours of grinding with my Moms old Dremel, I found the cat… and the willows too.
When I see an old, beat up car or maybe a run-down farm house, I never see them as they are, I see what they could be. This also happens when I look at an old moose antler, a chunk of soapstone, or a certain piece of driftwood. By combining the materials necessary and using whatever tools I can get my hands on, or make, I try to realize what I’ve seen.
I don’t really have favorite tools, colors, or media. Each new piece I make usually needs its very own method of creation. I know a piece is almost finished when I feel a sense of pride in it and that I have done justice, both to the subject and to the materials; then I work on it a while longer. I don’t know that I have ever truly finished anything, at some point I usually just have to force myself to stop.
About Artist Lester Newell
Born in 1965 in Anchorage, AK, Lester Newell is a leading award winning artist in Alaska and has followers all over the world. Lester has been carving for over 20 years and has studied the techniques and influences of talented Native Alaskans. By studying and learning from them, he absorbed the acute attention to detail associated with his carvings, subsequently refining his own visual and conceptual vocabulary that emerged through his focus on the points of intersection between architecture, sculpture, and spatial analysis. He has the smooth hands of a master storyteller, and enjoys creating pieces of artwork from scenes of nature that he experiences throughout his life.
Lester grew up on a homestead near Anchorage. When not in school, taking care of animals, cutting firewood, or helping his dad fix equipment or buildings, Lester hiked the mountains camping, hunting, and trapping. Summers were spent commercial salmon fishing in Kasilof, Alaska on the Kenai Penin sula. Each year the entire family would spend up to a month in the wilderness hunting for the two moose to feed them the rest of the year.
Lester gained most of his early art education from his mother, who is also an artist, and his fabrication skills from his father, who was a carpenter. After completing many engineering and art classes in college, and getting a degree in auto and diesel technology in Denver, CO Lester worked as a diesel mechanic for a few years before pursuing artwork as a career.
Lester’s work can be found in a myriad of public and private art collections both in the United States and abroad, and has been seen in numerous exhibitions throughout Alaska. He currently lives and works in Bend, Oregon.
Artist Code: LHN
