Hello!  I am julie dzikiewicz

I didn’t have much of an opinion on history classes as a child—they never seemed relevant to my life. After all, history was the tale of men: great men, awful men, and men who walked the grey in between. 

History didn’t connect with me until five years ago when I rented a studio and started painting at the Workhouse Arts Center. This place used to be called the Occoquan Workhouse until prison beds were carted out and drywall carried in. 

Suddenly I was putting brush to canvas in the same place that suffragists refused to put fork to mouth, where they engaged in hunger strikes that swayed the opinion of a nation and won them—won me—the right to vote. While some men were allies in the movement, women led, women fought; women undeniably filled the history books.

I was filled with rage and wonder that almost no one else knew this history. Clearly, something needed to be done about this.  I began a series of paintings honoring the suffragists. As I worked, I saw that the story didn’t end in 1920, so I painted contemporary women who advanced the fight.