How jung, sugar & old master oils became the foundation of Domina’s practice

At Arts to Hearts, we think about the unconscious a lot. About the images that arrive uninvited, the feelings that resist language, the things we carry quietly that only ever find their form in art.

Our Best of the Art World editorial was built around exactly that, to find the artists brave enough to go to those places and bring something back that the rest of us can finally recognise in ourselves. And when we came across Domina’s work, something happened that does not happen every day. We went quiet. We just looked. And then we looked again.

There are very few artists who can make you feel seen and slightly unsettled at exactly the same time. Domina is one of them.

She is Toronto based, and her path to where she is now is not a straight one which, once you understand her work, makes complete sense. She is not an artist who follows prescribed routes.

She never has been. She trained across multiple institutions, spent time studying in Florence with contemporary masters, built a practice that draws on old master techniques and applies them to imagery that arrives not from planning or intention but from somewhere far more interesting than that. Somewhere most people are not brave enough to look.

Her paintings feature children. And before that makes you picture anything familiar stop. Because what Domina does with that subject is unlike anything you have encountered before.

There is something in her work that pulls you in with colour and beauty and then reaches something inside you that you were not quite expecting to be reached. Her collectors describe the connection as eerily familiar. Like recognising someone without having met them. A shorthand that needs no explanation.

We found ourselves wanting to understand exactly how she gets there. What she is chasing, what she is trying to say, and what happens in that strange space between intention and instinct where her most honest work is born. We think you will too.

Let’s get to know Domina through our conversation with her and discover the imagery, the instinct, and the singular vision behind one of the most quietly extraordinary practices we have encountered.

Q1. Can you share a bit about your background and how your journey through institutions like the University of Toronto, Sheridan College, and OCAD helped shape your creative voice and practice?

I think it’s dangerous to trust an institution to tell you what you need to actualize as an artist. I cherry picked training from 3 different art colleges/ universities, purely following my interests. I trusted it to shape my creative expression in a way that was unique and authentic to me.

I had no concern about acquiring degrees and to this day I have never been asked if I have one. The privileged status of BFAs and MFAs in the gallery world is over. When students entering art school ask my advice I tell them that their individuality is their currency and to chase what lights them up.

Q2. You describe your practice as “my atelier of pop-surreal portraiture” why does the word “atelier” feel more fitting to you than simply “studio”?

Every year I spend a few weeks in Florence studying the figure with different mentors. The city itself, and the contemporary masters who live for great art, have changed my practice into much more of a romantic endeavour. My studio has become a haven of inspiration- an atelier that I can’t wait to wake up to.

Q3. Your surrealism feels both dreamlike and intentional, is it rooted more in the unconscious, or in careful construction?

Every painting I’ve ever planned feels derivative so I abandoned that approach years ago. Now I start with a face, and then I take a back seat and listen to those emotionally confusing images I have in that window right before falling asleep.

Taking control of the final destination feels like pulling the plug before climax. The final destination is always a surprise to me; it comes from a place that’s not consciously available but far more interesting than something I could have intentionally designed.

Q4. There’s something unsettling about your child subjects, they resist ideas of innocence or sweetness. What are you trying to reveal about childhood that is often hidden or overlooked?

Children are the most authentic of beings and it makes them powerhouses. They have yet to be conditioned or care what others think . Their art is a great reflection of it- high energy, raw emotion just raining out of these whole little beings. To keep that conviction is a feat in adulthood; it’s a theme in my work that I find to be universally relatable.

Q5. Your approach to portraiture is described as “Jungian.” What does that mean practically? Are you painting archetypes? Shadow selves? Personas versus true selves?

I use the state of reverie, between wake and sleep, to harvest my imagery. I treat visions as direct symbolic messages from my unconscious, and paint them accordingly. I believe archetypal themes guide one’s existence so inevitably my paintings are littered with them. In my opinion Pinocchio is a perfect archetypal map of the human condition.

I don’t find it surprising that when my work feels it’s reached a successful conclusion, I find multiple themes from that story (the “slaying of the dragon,” sacrifice and resurrection, the decent into the underworld, etc).

Q6. The series “Eat Your Heart Out” used sugar as a metaphor to explore “the dichotomy of shame and pleasure.” Tell us about that. Why sugar?

Because it’s bad for you but so fucking delicious. A perfect metaphor for the tension I aim for in my work.

Q7. You incorporate “classical representational oil painting techniques.” What techniques specifically glazing, underpainting, indirect painting?

My approach is pretty eclectic but a lot of technique stems from the Florence Academy, which focus’ on techniques of the old masters. For example, I use the 4 colour Zorn palette for all my figures ( exclusively Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red Light, Ivory Black and Flake White).

It’s the same limited palette as Rembrandt and Sargent. The intense blues and greens made from such a cool black and warm yellow feels like magic.

Q8. The “candy coated palettes” those bright, sweet colours. How do you mix those? Are you using paint straight from the tube, or carefully mixing custom colors?

If I could sum up my palette in one tube, Gamblin1980’s Quinacridone Violet would be it. I mixed that hue into my colours more than any other. It’s so rich and ephemeral. It can be warm or cool depending on its placement. I used to cheapen out on paint, but once one sees the richness of chroma in quality oils, it’s impossible to go back.

Q9. Do you ever meet collectors who buy your work? Do they tell you why they’re drawn to it?

In this era of global connectivity it’s great to have collectors finally be able to connect directly with me, but rare to be in the same city to actually meet. When we do connect, more often than not the connection feels eerily familiar – like we are from the same small town and have a shorthand together.

The connection to my work seems equally uncanny- the connection can’t be explained but is evidently strong.

Q10. Looking at where you are now versus where you were five or ten years ago, what’s the biggest success you’ve achieved that no one else would notice?

Prioritizing my self truth. In doing so I have found a dedicated audience that feels we speak the same secret language. The more I intimately engage with my collectors the more mutual and rewarding I find that discovery to be.

Q11. What’s the one piece of advice you wish someone had given you when you were starting out?

Following every passion and using the sum of your eclectic knowledge will set you free. Be so very you. Nobody wants more of the same.

As our conversation with Domina drew to a close, we kept sitting with one thing she said — that her greatest success, the one nobody else would notice, has been prioritising her own truth. And in doing so, finding the people who feel it too.

That is such a quiet, honest thing to say. And it stayed with us.

Because it is easy to talk about authenticity in art. It is much harder to actually live it. To abandon the plan when it feels derivative. To start a painting with a face and no destination and trust that something worth saying will arrive.

To paint the uncomfortable, the unnamed, the thing that lives in the space between waking and sleep and believe that other people will meet you there. Domina does all of that. Every single time. And the work that comes from it carries a weight and a presence that you simply cannot manufacture through any amount of technical skill or conscious intention alone.

What also moves us is how she talks about the people who connect with her work. Not as collectors or an audience but as people who speak the same secret language. Who find their way to her paintings and feel, without being able to explain it, that something has genuinely recognised them.

That kind of connection is the rarest thing a practice can produce. And it only ever happens when an artist was brave enough to go somewhere completely true and stay there.

For those who want their walls to hold something that actually reaches them work that changes the feeling of a room, that says the thing words never quite could, Domina’s paintings are exactly that.

She told us to be so very you. Nobody wants more of the same. And she has lived every word of that.

Follow Domina through the links below, explore her world, and see for yourself what happens when an artist trusts her unconscious completely and has the skill to bring it all the way home.