This Woman’s Work by Julie Delporte reviewed in Winter Herizons 2021

" THIS WOMAN’S WORK JULIE DELPORTE Drawn & Quarterly REVIEW BY KRIS ROTHSTEIN This personal sketchbook of images, thoughts and stories bursts with colour, emotion and reflections about life as a female artist. The central themes are announced on the opening page with a quote from Delporte’s father, who underestimated and belittled women’s art and, by extension, their work and lives. “Whenever anything was poorly done, my father would joke: ‘must be a woman’s handiwork.’” This Woman’s Work is a quest to prove him wrong, to reclaim the desire to create and find fulfillment as a woman and artist. Delporte embraces what has historically been dismissed as too feminine, exploring styles and subjects that are intuitive, sensitive and ladylike. The inspiration for the book was the life of the Finnish artist and writer Tove Jansson, creator of the Moomin books and comics in the mid-20th century and a rebel who carved unusual independence in her life. Delporte laments her failure to write a book about Jansson, but the tales of her own travels to Helsinki become a powerful reminder of why strong female role models are vital. In art galleries she still sees depictions of women’s bodies—inert, sub- missive and produced by men. A significant undercurrent of the book follows Delporte’s attempts to confront and give voice to a childhood experience of sexual trauma. The graphic art is composed with coloured pencils, often rough strokes,which produce a vibrant effect. Each drawing or series has an intense and surprising colour palette: a navy blue and purple cabbage morphs into a landscape inhabited by women’s naked legs and genitalia in a tale of attempted conception. The book is hand-lettered in spare but evocative text. The visual focus is on female bodies, breaking through the frustration of a world created by and for men. Delporte is wildly successful at creating moods with big splashes of colour which can be tense and dan- gerous or cozy and secure. She presents fantastic details, but the strength of the art lies in suggestions of the whole through fragments—a coat half-coloured-in, a face seen only from the bridge of the nose up. Animals and islands provide a much-needed sense of magic, escape and freedom. This Woman’s Work feels like a personal process that ends in victory as Delporte writes, “I’m starting to fall in love with the idea of being a woman.” " 

Find the full issue of Herizons, Winter 2021 here.