Lyse Lemieux’s practice is often described as investigating the spaces between drawing and painting, representation and abstraction. She creates works that range from expansive, site-specific installations to intimate drawings and paintings. The series Crise, translating to Crisis in English, reflects upon a period in which Lemieux witnessed an experience of personal turmoil at close proximity. The Crise series’ abstracted figures offer a meditation on psychological anguish. Mouths—whether gaping and spouting sound or stitched closed and silenced—are a focus across these works on paper, demonstrating Lemieux's characteristic repetitive process and formidable command of line in her exploration of the human form and psyche.
Lemieux’s work holds great significance in the study of art history on the West Coast of Canada. Lemieux exemplifies a generation of women artists, such as Gathie Falk, Liz Magor, Renee van Halm, and others, whose work is concerned with the body and the condition of domesticity through process- and materiality-focused drawing, painting, and sculpture. Regrettably, this cohort’s work was markedly overlooked during the prominence of the Vancouver School of photo-conceptualists through the 1980s to early 1990s. In recent years, following a number of major solo exhibitions and significant public art commissions, Lemieux has begun to receive the recognition that her expansive exhibition history and artistic practice deserves.