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Bio/Statement

Jeannette Sirois is a Canadian visual artist whose drawing-based practice centres on large-scale hyper-realistic figurative works set within stark, single-colour fields. The figures emerge through multi-layered mixes of coloured pencil, graphite, ink, and water-based media on paper. She often integrates drawn lettering as tattoo-like marks or background dialogues, anchoring her themes.

Her portraits confront identity, racism, homophobia, and mental health, using text and symbolic objects to surface internal narratives. Each piece results from a slow, intentional process built through conversations with her subjects, preparatory studies, and many hours of layered mark-making.

In contrast, her botanical and creature series draw on vanitas traditions and environmental allegories, incorporating ancient Roman plinth-inspired engravings drawn using marble powders, chalk and pencil, to explore environmental fragility across time.

Her influences include Georgia O’Keeffe’s use of scale, Artemisia Gentileschi’s empathetic gaze and expertise of realism, Piet Mondrian’s precision, Amy Sherald’s tonal restraint, Miros use of colour and Alexander Calder’s dynamic forms. Through this interplay of detail and concept, her work invites reflection and dialogue.

Sirois has received multiple awards and recognitions, including the 2024 and 2025 Catalyst Artist Grants, the Coloured Pencil Society of America Award for Exceptional Merit, and a public art commission from the City of Vancouver. Her work is held in private collections nationally and internationally, as well as in the permanent collection of the Surrey Art Gallery. Alongside her studio practice, she is a dedicated educator, sharing her knowledge through online courses, public workshops, and community mentorship.

I create large-scale figurative drawings that explore the emotional impact of homophobia, racism, mental health struggles, and environmental issues. I centre the dialogue around personal connections of experiences by the viewer asking them “have you ever been the target of name calling, threatened, dismissed or have you watched someone you love break under that weight? That feeling—the weight of it—is what I work to capture. My art is about putting those complex experiences onto paper, making them visible and impossible to ignore.”

CV

Materials

A few of her most-reached-for tools include:

  • Staedtler Mars Lumograph Black Pencils

  • Caran d’Ache Luminance Coloured Pencils

  • Polychromos highly saturated coloured pencils

  • Prismacolor Premier White Pencil and blending pencil

  • M+R Brass Sharpener, KUM Sharpeners

  • Mono erasers and kneaded erasers

  • Fabriano Artistico Hot Pressed paper 640 GSM, Legion Stonehenge White Paper and 4 ply Museum Rising Board

 © 2023 by Jeannette Sirois. 

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