• born in 1933 in Toronto, Ontario
• grandparents emigrated from Lithuania

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Claire Weissman Wilks has published several books as well as pursuing a career in painting and drawing, showing her work in Canada and Europe. During the 1970s her erotic images of women were rarely accepted for showing in conservative Toronto galleries, so she sought other means to show it, such as book publishing and illustration. Her books include: Two of Us Together: Each of Us Alone (1982), a compilation of erotic drawings exploring the nature of human sexuality and love; I Know Not Why the Roses Bloom (1986), a collection of lithographs and sculpture inspired by the diaries of Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jew who died in the 1940s at Auschwitz; and Hillmother (1983), a series of drawings on birth and the relationship between mother and children. While her Lithuanian heritage was not an emphasis in her upbringing, Wilks feels that the connection to eastern Europe has constantly affected her work, particularly a preoccupation with the Second World War. In her sculptures and drawings of women and sexuality, such as the series Totem Women (1993) and Tremors (1989), there is an underlying empayhy with the life of women in concentration camps, and a need to reinvest that life with the sexuality and sensuality that is denied in most Holocaust imagery. Even in her images of mothers and children, she is in part attempting to give life back to the great number of children whose lives were lost during the war. Wilks has also illustrated books, including John Montague's The Love Poems (1992) and D.M. Thomas’s The White Hotel (1991), and in 1979 published her own book, The Magic Box: The Eccentric Genius of Hannah Maynard. Wilks for many years was visual researcher for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, work for which she has been awarded an Emmy in 1978 and 1980, the Art Director's Cut Award in 1981, and an Oscar in 1982 for the film, Just Another Missing Kid.

Drawings: In the White Hotel
Luba Bystriansky Gallery, Toronto, Ontario

Drawings, Paintings and Sculpture
Luba Bystriansky Gallery, Toronto, Ontario

Sculpture and Works on Paper
Centro Culturale Canadese, Rome, Italy

Lithographs and Sculpture
Muzejsko Galeruski Centar, Zagreb, Croatia

Sculpture
Charles Allis Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Sculpture and Brush Drawings
Quan Schieder Gallery, Toronto, Ontario

Sculpture and Drawings
Debel Gallery, Jerusalem, Israel

Drawings and Lithographs
Arts and Letters Club, Toronto, Ontario

Retrospective, 1975-1987, Drawings
McGibbon Cultural Centre, Toronto, Ontario

Drawings and Lithographs
WR Mitchell Gallery & Associates, Calgary, Alberta

The Thinking Heart: Series of Drawings
Del Bello Gallery, Toronto, Ontario

Medallions, Lithographs
Del Bello Gallery, Toronto, Ontario

Miniatures
Pollack Gallery, Toronto, Ontario

"Drawings." Exile, A Literary Quarterly 4, no. 2 (1975): n.p.

"Drawings." Exile, A Literary Quarterly 8, nos. 3/4 (1983): n.p.

Exile, A Literary Quarterly 13, no. 1 (1988): Cover drawing.

"Five tremors: Etchings by Claire Weissman Wilks." Exile, A Literary Quarterly 16, no. 4 (1992): 423-427.

Hill Field: A Tribute to John Montague. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

"Lithographs." Exile, A Literary Quarterly 10, no. 2 (1985): n.p.

Meigs, Mary. "Pagan wholeness and holiness of bodies." Body Politic (May 1981): 22-23.

Montague, John. The Love Poems. Toronto, Ontario: Exile Editions, 1992.

---. An Occasion of Sin. Toronto, Ontario: Exile Editions, 1992.

Oates, Joyce Carol, ed. "Drawings." Ontario Review (1981): n.p.

"One flesh (the mound): Sculpture by Claire Weissman Wilks." Exile, A Literary Quarterly 16, no. 4 (1992): 92-93.

Pavlovic, Miodrag. A Voice Locked in Stone. Toronto, Ontario: Exile Editions, 1985.

Rosenblatt, J. The Sleeping Lady. Toronto, Ontario: Exile Publications, 1979.

"Seven last words." Toronto Life (December 1981): illustration.

Strange, K. Writings. Toronto, Ontario: Porcupine Quill Press, 1980.

"Two of Us Together, Each of Us Alone (Drawings by Claire Weissman Wilks)." Exile, A Literary Quarterly 16, no. 1 (1992): 419-424.

The Two of Us Together: Each of Us Alone. Toronto, Ontario: Exile Editions, 1982.

Weissman Wilks, Claire. Hillmother. Toronto, Ontario: Exile Editions, 1983.

---. I Know Not Why the Roses Bloom: Drawings, Lithographs, Sculpture, 1982-1986. Toronto, Ontario: Exile Editions, 1986.

---. In the White Hotel. Toronto, Ontario: Exile Editions, 1991.

---. The Magic Box: The Eccentric Genius of Hannah Maynard. Toronto, Ontario: Exile Editions, 1979.

---. "One flesh: Sculpture." Exile, A Literary Quarterly 15, no. 4 (1991): 64-80.

---. Tremors. Toronto, Ontario: Exile Editions, 1983.

Zeller, Ludwig. Totem Women: Mujeres en el Totem. Toronto, Ontario: Exile Editions, 1993.