Women from the lens of woman artist: Joelle Circé

Joelle Circé is an artist, a paintress and now an authoress. Over the past fifteen years or so, her art is solely about women as seen through the gaze of a woman artist. She is resolutely a feminist and a hardwired Queer.

Born in Montreal, Canada back in the mid-fifties, she went on to study drawing and oil painting. She is not sure that she can enumerate all of the extraordinary women who have been inspirations to her, but if she has to then the list would begin with Artemesia Gentileschi along with a ton of women artists throughout history, and would include those brave and courageous women of the Suffragette movement, Rosa Parks, and many of her past and close women friends that she has had the honour to meet since her transition, via her involvement with the V-Day orgs in Montreal and other feminist activist actions she has been a part of.

Creating art which speaks to women’s issues such as abuse, freedom from oppression, body image, our vulvas and yes, even erotica have all been part and parcel of her evolution. She finds herself impassioned by all things woman and female.

She was more directly introduced to lived feminism when she was invited to give a lecture at McGill University by the cast & crew of their V-Day organization. She did this for two years in a row and was named Vagina Warrior. To put it in her words, "I was humbled and honoured and from that moment on, I knew I was part of the greater sisterhood."

Joelle is now sixty four years of age, married to her same sex partner and living with five cats up in the lovely mountains of the Lanaudière region of Quebec where she paints and in the summer months, do a fair bit of organic gardening.