Arty Anita’s Fierce Frescos

Paula Xiberras

Well, Anita although Arty isn’t really known for frescos but the alliteration is irresistible. ‘Lester The Fierce’ the pseudonym for Anita Lester came about because Anita needed a persona and decided modelling her name on something akin to Alexander the Great. She says its a scary name, for a small in stature girl, but not forgetting Alexander the Great was small in statue too.

Eventually, the character of Lester The Fierce would feature in a street publication, a comic book that would be distributed in cafes. Anita says she still probably has a copy tucked away with her ‘junk’.

Lester The Fierce, aka Anita loves Tasmania, Hobart and MONA and has been here many times. She says she has had some fantastic shows here, in fact some of her best shows have happened here because unlike the occasionally ‘spoiled’ mainland state’s audiences the Tassie audience aren’t.

Anita is an exponent of ‘ghost pop’ a term she coined herself for ‘non genre specific music’ that has a ‘cinema atmosphere’ about it and a pinch of real ghostliness in the form of her haunting voice. There is also a reference to the spiritual world of ghosts with Anita having a strong interest in ‘things we can’t see’. This interest is backed up by a solid spiritual grounding,having studies theology, perhaps encouraged by her own experience of religion,with a mum that converted from Judaism to Sufism and back again, you might expect to see religion subtly woven into her songs.

Anita’s song ‘January’ originally a duet with Sam Lawrence follows the theme of a strong woman taking control in a relationship and with a name like ‘January’ it heralds a new beginning born out of the re-evaluation of the relationship, seeing the female protagonist take control of her destiny.

Anita ‘sometimes’ has a day job as a children’s book illustrator. Anita attended a Steiner school where she would find herself ‘painting all day’. Later, she attended film school and was told she would be better at ‘still art’. Proving that pronouncement wrong, Anita went on to animate two of her music videos including ‘January ‘and ‘colours’.

At this moment Anita is inspired to continue to explore music and see where it takes her and with a new album on the way Anita’s artistic talents will be employed as she enhances her music by including a graphic novel with her album.

Read more about Lester the Fierce, ‘January’ and more at:

www.lesterthefierce.com