Jo Napier

Artist Bio and Statement

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Jo Napier is a former technology journalist at The Ottawa Citizen and a  newspaper columnist at The Globe and Mail, who became a mom, started painting, and discovered that the history she was aware of failed to include women's stories and accomplishments.  

As a former newspaper business journalist, documentary associate producer and author, she has interviewed the Internet’s seminal thinkers and pioneers for a PBS series, two PBS documentaries, and a book, Technology With Curves (HarperCollins). This was during the dot.com technology heyday. And she kept wondering: “Where are the women's stories? Is our increasingly digital world even being influenced by women?"

Napier is a self-taught artist who eventually attended NSCAD extension courses, primarily those given by the wonderful, Heather Sayeau.

From her research, Napier felt a growing sense of responsibility to show her daughter the faces and stories of Great Women, which led to her first collection of large-scale contemporary portraits (The Nova Scotia Nine: Great Women of Nova Scotia), acquired by The Royal Bank for their national art collection.

Since then, she has created Great Women portraits for public and private sector clients which touch on different areas - medical innovation, leadership, and pioneering work in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) - yet they are all conceived in hopes of expanding our understanding of the true meaning, and impact, of 'women's work'.