Hester Cox

Hester has a BA (hons) in Illustration and works from her studio in Horton-in-Ribblesdale. Specialising in printmaking, her collagraphs explore her experience of the natural landscape. As a keen fellrunner, she repeatedly visits the wilder parts of the countryside at all times of year and in all weathers. Her prints reflect her chance encounters with wildlife and the seasonal changes within the landscape. By using multiple plates, painted textures and intricate cutting in her collagraph printmaking she can accentuate the patterns that she finds in the natural world, celebrate the colours found in nature and draw attention to the everyday occurrences that happen around us but that often go unnoticed or are soon forgotten. She is a founder member of Printmakers Circle & Three Peaks Arts and a member of Northern Print, Craven Arts and Ålgården Studios in Sweden.

Hester is an experienced tutor delivering printmaking workshops for arts organisations, in schools and in galleries. Awards include an Extending Practice Award from Chrysalis Arts, which allowed her to work with the Mercer Gallery and the British and Yorkshire Museums. She created prints in response to the Vale of York Viking Treasure Hoard and these were displayed alongside the treasure at the Mercer Gallery. In 2015 she was one of ten artists selected to take part in Mirror Images, an international printmaking exhibition, which took place simultaneously in North Yorkshire, Scotland, Finland and Sweden. She was selected for the New Lights Prize Exhibition in 2015 & 2017. 

Throughout 2019 & 2020, Hester is working on a funded project with the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes printing their extensive collection of wood engraving blocks created by Marie Hartley MBE: write, artist and founder of the museum. Her research will then take her into the Yorkshire Dales National Park to create a new body of work inspired by some of the places written about in the books that Hartley collaborated on with Ella Pontefract. This is to be exhibited at the museum in summer 2020.

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