"I am not the train, I am the locomotive. Afterwards, the message is beyond me. I am only a tool to make it heard." Adèle Blais seems to be at the heart of a recent movement: there are more and more illustrated works on inspiring women in history in children's bookstores. But, whether she is the instigator or part of a collective manifestation of the moment, Adèle carries within her the humility of those who know how to put their art at the service of something greater than themselves. Simone de Beauvoir, Camille Claudel, Maria Callas, Jane Austen, Coco Chanel: the unheard voices are numerous and the artist, inspired, is prolific. Adèle glues small pieces of texts, superimposes colors and acrylic textures to tell intimate and tragic parts of life that the great History has not been able to reveal.

Leaving your mark, a family story

If Adèle's academic background did not suggest anything exceptional, her personal history could not help but put art under her fingers so that she too could leave a trace that provokes and makes you think. Her grandmother Claire Rochon, assertive and rebellious, was the first woman in politics in a city in northern Ontario. One of her uncles was Minister of Defense under Pierre-Elliott Trudeau. Another, Jean-Éthier Blais, was a diplomat and an influential man of literature in Quebec. "There is a strong political vein that runs through me, a passion for the upheavals of history and society.

“Art was everywhere. Claire, the politician with a forehead all around her head, the one who faced the men sitting on the other side of the municipal table, was also a painter. Having become almost blind, she continued to paint and to ride her bike through the streets of Ottawa, she was quite the woman!” Adèle, an artist to her fingertips, embodies the fierce determination of her lineage to clear the path so that it could bring about change.

Selling and selling oneself, in the service of art

Adèle's family also included shopkeepers. "I naturally have an entrepreneurial spirit," explains the woman who was a saleswoman and waitress for 20 years. "I can sell everything, from shoes to works of art! I talk, I explain, I connect. Today, when I exhibit my paintings in a gallery, I feel like I'm putting them in prison if I'm not there to tell them! And I see the difference in sales."

A verve that she was able to put to the service of her art, once convinced of the scope of her talent. When passersby, captivated, began to stop and stick their noses in front of the windows of the Montreal studio offered to her by a first patron (Nicolas Thibault), when she saw herself signing autographs at a festival, when the director of a large production company, charmed, invited her onto a TV set, then her wings began to grow. "Something had happened. I had realized that my paintings had the power to touch people and do them good." Finally confident, she took the plunge. She became the creator, organizer, and promoter of fabulous events, her trademark. "I remember my first opening in 2007," she recalls. "It was in a former bank with huge ceilings and live music. The print on my dress was like my paintings." The media quickly seized the artist on the fly and set about building her reputation.

Paint to reveal and awaken

“Looking back, I realize that my years working with the public were a necessary passage to understand human nature. At four in the morning, in the back of the bar, everyone is on an equal footing. It’s great to create a space, through art, where we can share our tormented lives, where we can tell each other, in all vulnerability, our areas of shadow and light. I learned to open up so that others, in turn, can do the same. That’s what it means to trace, to open the path. As an entrepreneur, I want to reveal the hidden sides of history, to put something bigger in society that resonates and awakens.”

Adèle likes to show the burns, what is heavy to bear, the unspoken and stifled things that deserve to be heard. "They are strong, rebellious women, sometimes scorned, broken, often locked up, almost always unloved; others are more celebrated, but with an intimate part that still escapes us," she writes. Did you know that Mileva Einstein, a scientific genius also at the origin of the Nobel theories of relativity, was left alone in poverty with their three sons, one of whom was schizophrenic? That Hedy Lamarr, inventor of the coding system for the transmission of WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS, was discredited because she was one of the most beautiful women in the world in the 1930s?" The portraits that Adèle chooses to highlight are political positions that touch and shake.

Invest and get involved, by all means

In 2018, Adèle wanted to bring together the portraits that had been exhibited around the world to make an art book, closer to us. "I wanted to pick up all the pieces of the puzzle. These unfair stories had made me so angry that I had to find another medium to honor them and make them shine among the general public." Adèle produced, edited and distributed the collection " Les sublimes. Hommage aux femmes qui ont osé ", whose stories are told in poetry by the moving author and fine psychologist Nathalie Plaat. "I invested a lot in this project, financially and emotionally, but I went about it intuitively," explains Adèle. The book is now being reissued.

And Adèle has created supports to make her works ever more widely available: from printed sanitary masks to innovative technical applications. “In 2006, when I was just starting out, I set up a website,” explains Adèle. “It wasn’t common at the time in my field. Today, I’m launching an augmented reality application. It’s the technology of the future: you see the texture, the relief, you can get even closer than in a gallery. It’s important for me to always be at the forefront.”

Adèle continues to learn how to be an entrepreneur as she works on her projects. Their echo is so powerful each time that they allow her to move forward more and more to make voices heard that have been silenced for a long time that time, under her brushes, can no longer contain.