Juliette Seguin Levesque, 97, an extraordinary artist, writer, religious educator and family matriarch who used her talents to inspire others and deepen their faith,  died at St. Elizabeth Medical Health Center in Utica on Sunday after a relatively brief illness.
Married to the late Charles Levesque for 59 years, Mrs. Levesque was a Vermont native, born to the late Georges and Laurence (Bourgie) Seguin on Jan. 5, 1922.
When she was 3 her parents relocated to Montreal, where she and her sister enrolled in Catholic schools and schools  in drama and elocution. It led her to roles in French radio including soap opera, commercials and poetry reading.  Then after studying at the Beaux Arts School and  Marie-Anne College, she traveled all alone to New York City to continue learning at the Grand Central School of Art and the National Academy of Art.
In 1946 she  met and married Charles, an Army Air Force veteran who had participated in the Normandy invasion. Together they went on to raise seven children in Brooklyn, Queens and Sayville, Long Island.    At St. Pascal Baylon Church in Queens she was both a parish secretary and member of the Queens Catholic Interracial Council, working to help  French-speaking Haitians needing  support.
Her own deep Catholic faith continued to grow, reflected in the large body of art which she produced at home and in classes she taught. Some of her dramatic works include her large scale mural of Michelangelo's Creation, which she painted in Sayville on her dining room wall.  Other notable works include a  painting inspired by the Holocaust that now hangs  on display at the Holocaust Museum at Suffolk Community College, a portrait of Catholic priest-philosopher Teillard de Chardin; and a work entitled Rachel, illustrating a woman's  struggle to protect her unborn child from an abortion.
To friends, family and acquaintances alike, young and old,  clergy and non-clergy,  Mrs. Levesque  was often  seen as a  source of practical and spiritual wisdom
Pre-deceased by a daughter, Christine Kevorkian, formerly of Las Vegas, she is survived by four daughters and two sons: Rose-Marie Dujardin and husband, Richard, of Providence, RI,;  Charles-Laurent Levesque and wife,  Edith, of Mesa, Arizona;  Vincent Levesque and his wife Ulrike, of Zurich, Switzerland; Michelle Tegan and husband John of Palmerton, Pa.; Elizabeth Taylor and husband, Richard, of Sauquoit and Shirley, NY; and Jeannine Henck and her husband, James, of Sauquoit. In recent years she was honored to become the adoptive mother to the Rev. Seth Awo Doku, a priest from Ghana now serving as a priest in Wantagh
Mrs. Levesque is also survived by 24  grandchildren and 34 great-grandchildren. She has one surviving brother, Robert Seguin.  of Canada and is predeceased by four siblings, Camillienne Hazel and Georges, Lionel, and Pierre Seguin.


Mrs. Levesque chose to donate her body to science. A memorial Mass in her honor will be held Thursday (Sept 26) at 10 a.m. at St Patrick-St Anthony Church, 3372 Oneida St., Chadwicks, NY.  A  Mass of Christian burial will be held at a future date at St. Lawrence Church in Sayville, NY, with an internment next to her husband at Calverton National Cemetery, Wading River, NY.