ARTIST BIO: STEVEN LESTER
Growing up in Atlanta, Steven always had an enthusiasm for sports and while taking art in school, he was commissioned to illustrate a series of GameDay program covers for Georgia Tech football. After graduating from Georgia State University with a degree in Visual Arts, he began his career as a commercial illustrator and soon became the Creative Director of Turner Broadcasting System. Because this was during the years Ted Turner owned the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks, Steven was able to meet a number of the players and became a fascinated fan.
By this time, he had already cultivated a love for action-oriented sports art. But his fast-track creative design and advertising career allowed little time for painting. He soon became a highly successful Vice President, Creative Director for two international advertising agencies, winning more than 100 national and international awards.
When Steven and his wife adopted 2 children, he found himself traveling and becoming a conflicted, absentee father. After considerable deliberation, he made a conscious career change, resigning from the advertising agency to attend seminary. For the next 20 years, he pastored churches and pioneered numerous, creative ministry and missions initiatives. He also began focusing his creative skills advancing causes and issues that are of value to him. He had the privilege of traveling the world and making life-long friends from Russia to India to Africa. But again, he had very little time for cultivating a passion for drawing and painting.
After 4 decades of focusing on other priorities and beginning to lean toward retirement, Steven purposed to spend the next 3 years honing his fine art craft. Five years later, he has now joyfully shifted his focus and fully embraced his love of painting. He has produced more than 200 paintings in 2 years and was tapped as featured ‘artist of the month’ by The National Art Museum of Sport (NAMOS), a fine art museum based in Indianapolis. As of today, he has already scheduled two major solo shows for 2018 in two different states.
Powered by Artwork Archive