JOY HESTER
Joy Hester was the only woman member of the Angry Penguins, Melbourne’s wartime group of expressionist painters that included her first husband Albert Tucker and her friends Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, John Perceval and Danila Vassilieff. Hester also had a close friendship with arts patrons Sunday and John Reed who, from the 1930s, had opened their home Heide to painters, poets and musicians.
Hester’s expression as an artist was as radical and as intense as her life. She chose to draw and rarely used oils. It meant she created a space for the development of her vision separate from her circle who favoured easel painting. Her medium was brush and ink and her usual method of working was to sit on the floor, either in company or alone, and rapidly produce up to 20 drawings
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