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Peggy Jester
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Des Moines |
interviewed 6-15-1998 | painting, printmaking |
copyright © Peggy Jester
artwork
2008 update
interview clips
artist's statement
| Peggy Jester was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1937. She grew up in Des Moines and attended Catholic and public schools. She received her B.A. from the University of Colorado in 1960. She worked as a commercial artist until she got | married; she has three children. She earned her M.F.A. from Drake University in 1981. She is a painter and printmaker in Des Moines, and over the years has taught several classes at the Des Moines Art Center. |
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| Farm Hands Album copyright © 2005 Peggy Jester All Rights Reserved |
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| Time Moves On copyright © 2005 Peggy Jester All Rights Reserved |
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| Time Moves On (2) copyright © 2005 Peggy Jester All Rights Reserved |
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| Prairie Storm copyright © 2006 Peggy Jester All Rights Reserved |
| Children
& painting
(40 sec.) |
Art
play
(37 sec.) |
Active
visual sense
(36 sec.) |
Neighborhood
issues
(50 sec.) |
Personal
learning evolution
(42 sec.) |
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We had our first child in '63…third child in 1970. I did not do any artwork during those years. I got into antiques, refinishing furniture, decorating. After we moved to our house on Cottage Grove in 1975, our children were in school. I wanted to go back and learn to paint. I'd always wanted to use color. I had tried some painting on my own before that, and I just didn't know what I was trying to do. Actually, I recognize now that I didn't have anything to say in my paintings.
When I was in school, I didn't really think I could play. I had to have a certain body of work ready at a certain time. I guess it had to look skilled, and to me looking skilled meant making it as realistic as you could. The more I play, the more I find areas and insights and color relationships that are new to me and interesting in ways I want to repeat. The whole painting may not work, but there's one or two areas where something new comes out, an evolution takes place. So I kind of want to play a little bit more. And that's what I'm doing.
I just look at the world when I'm doing art work; I have a really active visual sense for detail, especially. First of all, I look at it—whether it's a seed or a flower or whatever, a bird—as a unit of nature. But next, an aesthetic judgment about the way the forms fit together, and how they relate to the shapes behind it, or how the color interacts—or what red is that? And what green is that? And how does it work? It's really an interesting process to think about, to be involved with mentally.
I have done a lot of advocacy and volunteer work with neighborhood issues. Worked most recently with a city commission that devised a preservation plan for the City of Des Moines. Somehow that kind of work balanced the artwork that is so insular and quiet and alone. And I used the outlet with neighborhood issues and those kinds of issues to be with other people, and be involved with other issues.
The paintings that I really feel mean the most to me are the little neighborhood paintings where—nothing concrete of human existence, no people, but—either through the light or the shapes, there is a sense of habitation and a sense of someone caring.
Personally for me, art has been a great learning experience. I've learned so much about being patient, having confidence in my own thought processes, learning to keep at it. I used to re-work and re-work and re-work the same painting. And I've learned now, just start another one, and keep at it. Just keep working, and it'll—a lot of the time—work itself out. It may not be the same painting that you had in your head, but—get over it! Just go have confidence in yourself. It's taken me so long to learn those lessons. It's just been a real personal learning evolution for me.
