Past Exhibits
Esther Bojanower
“Heritage Remembered”
Aug 12th –
Sept 30th, 2007
Esther "Boji" Bojanower
August 10, 1908 -
March 29, 2001
Esther produced around 300 paintings during her 30 year painting career, even though she was in her 50's when she first took professional art classes from Wilson Turner. Generous by nature, she gave many of her paintings to friends or family members, selling less than two dozen. 
She sold some on commission, and others to staff and families of patients at Downey Community Hospital where she exhibited for several years. Her paintings hung at Downey City Hall, local banks, and later at Zrelak Family Mortuary, where appropriately, memorial services were conducted first for Al Bojanower, then for Esther.
In 1980, several of her paintings were exhibited at the annual conference of the California State Trucking Association at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego. Esther received over 2 dozen ribbons at various competitions including the Robin Hood Festival in Oregon. She was a member of the Tigard Art League for several years. Judges of the various competitions included Richard Burg, Leslie Carmen, Bob Cunningham, Charles Hammond, Larry Klepper, Arnold Schipin, Clare Smith, and Ned Young.
For many years Esther was active in the Downey Art League and on the board of Furman Park, site of the Downey Art Museum. She also served as Art League Liaison to the Board of Directors of the Downey Museum of Art. Her paintings were bright and sunny, reflecting her outlook on life. When her husband became severely incapacitated by Parkinson's Disease and was no longer able to travel, she spent what little free time she had painting scenes from photographs.
Among her papers was a folder labeled, "My First Art" with the name Esther Head signed on perspective sketches, silhouettes, and the hard edge pastels popular in the 1920's and with a number grade on them. These were probably done when Esther studied teaching in Normal School at Monmouth, as Western Oregon University was formerly called. The folder also contains a few simple watercolors, and crayon drawings with objects composed of a series of vertical lines.
Her mature painting style was compared by one of her Downey Art League friends to Van Gogh. Some paintings are done in the primitive style of Grandma Moses. Following her death in Southern California in March of 2001, the paintings remaining in her Downey home were shipped to Oregon where she and her husband spent summers on their Madrona Hill Farm.
