Angry, Muscular, Hairy, Queer Femmes

Art for Those the World Wasn’t Made For

Lex Bohémier draws angry, muscular, hairy, queer femmes to empower anyone who can relate, and many can. Inspired by their experiences, Bohémier uses digital art and paint to embrace their freedom of expression and “make art for the people the world wasn’t made for.”

The artist, who was born and raised in Thunder Bay, has been creating and selling art since they were 14 years old. They started at the Die Active art sale, and now own their own business, shipping out prints, apparel, stickers, and tattoo sheets to a worldwide audience. Going by OatMilkLady, they have developed a style that many people online have felt a connection to, yielding more than 10,000 Instagram followers and 37,400 TikTok fans.

An arts and gender studies graduate, Bohémier creates art from a feeling of anger at what the world deems acceptable or not, turning the normal and expected on its head and making art to admire. Bohémier looks at themself and others and sees beauty in the frustration female-presenting people face in the world. “As a queer person or as a woman you are going to be villainized no matter what, so you might as well look hot while doing it,” they say. Their artistic depictions show free and confident femmes cursing and doing as they please.

“I remember being young and I played [sports] and was always aggressive and people would get bothered that I was aggressive,” Bohémier says. “They were like ‘What are you doing?’ Why are you doing that?’” They continue to have people question them in a similar way for getting mad, and for standing up when others would sit down. Regardless, they continue living life and making art without the judgment of others as they move up in the world as a successful artist and business owner.

This summer, Bohémier participated in the painting of a mural as a part of the Solidarity Collective alongside other local artists. The mural has been in the works since May when the group started meeting on Zoom to make a plan for the community art project. Bohémier’s section of the mural shows two hands reaching towards a spider, and the hands are sprouting flowers and fungi. Spiders are said to represent creativity, as they create their homes from nothing but themselves, and Bohémier says that inspired their art on the wall.

“Creativity, in general, was super scary for me, so I thought it was interesting how spiders, which I’m scared of, represent creativity,” they say. “Those hands represent embracing creativity and embracing that it’s gonna be scary, and to be gentle with yourself. Because those hands aren’t there to squash the spider, they’re there to invite creativity.”

You can see the mural on Cooke Street.

For more info, check out OatMilkLady on Instagram and Facebook @oatmilklady, TikTok @theoatmilklady and their website at oatmilklady.com.