Dominique's mother, an avid seamstress, closely supervised the start of her creative education when she was a young child. Her first method of artistic expression was choreography. "Building texture with my paintbrush, paper, and other objects while fusing my flow of thinking with them is a thrill," the artist says. Given this context, Dominique's work is motivated by the connection between movement, fabric, and art. 

 

She creates a variety of items in her art, from spoken word pieces to paintings. She also combines many art genres to produce something that is both original and unorthodox.

 

Interviewer: What inspires you to do art?

 

Dominique: I want my art to evoke, inspire, transcend, and empower people. I do it in a way that is probably a fruitless attempt to exert some control over the reality in which I live, recreating or exposing it in a way that corresponds to my idealized vision of how the world ought to be. In an effort to preserve their beauty, strength, and fear for future visits and reliving them, I'm trying to put into words what I see and feel. I try to maintain some sense of control in a chaotic world in this way. I want to be able to share with someone how I perceive the world, how I interact with it, and how I experience it. 

 

Interviewer: Why is it so important to you to share the African American experience? 

 

Dominique: Our roots and wings are in storytelling. 

 

The human soul desires—no, the human spirit requires—to be validated, regardless of who you are or where you are from. Notwithstanding the importance of tale in every culture and ethnicity, I am aware that black people are rooted in story and shared lived experience regardless of how they arrived in this country. It is how we observe. 

 

The People Could Fly, a renowned children's book of African American storytelling, was written by the late Virginia Hamilton, who remarked that storytelling was the first chance for black people to express themselves as something other than property. This is one of my favorite statements. 

 

The threads that unite us are stories, even the savage ones about lynchings and discrimination. There is little doubt that storytelling is a tool for African Americans to express their importance and place in the world. 

 

Dominique has made significant artistic progress over the last ten years, creating work that is thought-provoking. The artworks in her portfolio that are listed here are just a small sample of those that have, in all likelihood, had an impact on the field of art.