Dominique Hunter

IT’S THE LAUNCH of the National Art Gallery’s exhibition for Mashramani 2010, and acclaimed Guyanese sculptor, Winslow Craig takes time to look at a framed drawing, leaning slightly forward, studying it intently.

It’s a classic surrealist composition, redolent in its imagery of the artistic movement’s major icon, Dali, the dominant object in the painting being the torso of a woman, backing the viewer, right arm akimbo, fingers disappearing into a pocket of what is ambiguously a tight leather dress or her own flesh. The ambiguity is reinforced by both the tonal difference between the woman’s arm and the material her fingers fit smugly into, as well as the zipper which opens not onto skin beneath, but a dark space bordered by vulval folds of either clothing or skin.

The arm’s angle is paralleled by a wooden frame which at once contains and conjoins, in an Escher-like perspective illusion, another smaller frame.  On the border of the outer frame stands a mirror reflection and miniaturisation of the dominant woman, a reflection, yes, but one at once more voluptuous and muscular than the ostensible ‘original’. 

Hunter and sculptor, Winslow Craig at the launch at  the National Gallery’s

Craig, after some time, gives a positive nod of approval.  Next to the drawing, a slim, beautiful, bespectacled young woman is looking at the sculptor with what appears to be a curatorial nervousness.  When Craig enquires of her whose drawing it is, she, with a mixture of shyness and pride, claims ownership of the work. As she introduces herself, she reminds the senior artist of an encounter they had while she was still a student at ‘Burrowes’, which was obviously influential in the path she’s taken with her medium for drawing… the graphite pencil.  Craig’s advice, to the effect that graphite pencil drawing was not obsolete, has clearly found its eventual vindication in the work he was examining only a minute before.

Hunter, physically conservative, is almost effusive in her admiration of Craig and what seems to be gratitude for advice he gave at a single encounter almost half a decade before.  After an amiable conversation, in which Craig also noticeably loses his usual shyness, also becomes effusive in his assumed role of incidental master to that Hunter’s apprenticeship, she asks a bemused bystander to take a picture of the two of them standing in front of her drawing.

Who is Dominique Hunter?
Despite the feminine spelling of her first name, Dominique Hunter later confesses, most people who view her artwork go on the presumption that she is male.  At 22 years of age, the layout artist and arts page journalist at the Guyana Times is a quiet phenom in the already relatively quiet world of local art; a hidden gem.

It is hard reconciling the disparate elements of Dominique Hunter, the woman and the work.  The conservative look — the square-rimmed glasses, unostentatious clothing, the hair (though luxuriant) always pulled tightly back into a simple ponytail — belies the liberality of the imagination.  And her casual conversation, spiced with dozens of girlisms, is hard to reconcile with the intellectual depth of her work, her drawing in particular. 

On her Facebook page’s ‘About Me’ section, for example, lowercase and all, is the following:
“i’m a fun loving, down to earth girl who enjoys the simple things in life. i am me and i cannot change to suit or plz anyone. accept me for who i am and not for what i have or what i can give u and we’ll get along just fine”
Contrast this with the complexity of visual metaphor and reference in work, like the parodying of the ‘Princess and the Frog’ fairytale in the campishly titled ‘Tug o’ War Kinda Love’, or the uncharacteristically gigantic, dour and forlorn Cupid acting as puppet master to two lovers passionately embracing while surrounded by a strange architecture.  Hunter might enjoy the simple things in life (the bulk of the interview of this article being conducted over a couple of beers at Windies, for example), but her artwork is anything but simple.

Growth as an artist
The best graduating diploma student from the Burrowes School of Art in 2007, Hunter recalled for the Sunday Chronicle one of her earliest memories of the impetus towards producing art.

“It was in nursery school, right, and I had to take a colouring book to school, and I remember being so excited.  I told Mommy late about it and she was saying that she wasn’t sure she could get one in time, but the next morning there was the colouring book.  I went to school and started colouring this squirrel with a purple crayon and suddenly, I hear this shout behind me, ‘Who tell you to start colouring?’.”

Her next memory of childhood artistic ‘advice’ was an uncle who would always encourage her to colour within the lines, and to make sure she covered the entire area.  A decade and a half later, the enthusiastic nursery school artist is now one of the younger artists, possibly the youngest, whose works are on display at Castellani House.

Later on in the year, November, if all goes well, Dominique Hunter will have the honour, at just 23 years old, of having her own solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Art.  Her as yet untitled collection will feature exclusively her abstract and surreal drawing, primarily graphite.   The bulk of her off-time from her six-days-a-week job is spent in her ‘studio’, her bedroom.

There, she will be refining the type of artwork, surrealistic drawing, that she has been inspired to produce since suggested by her lecturer at
‘Burrowes’, Josefa Tamayo.  While adept at other media (she was also adjudged best painter in her class) with surrealism, Hunter says she can express her innermost fears, desires, hurt, uncertainty.

Artistic PR
In Hunter’s opinion, the visual arts have limited exposure in Guyana, outside of and in spite of exhibitions like the one currently on at Castellani House.  While her training has been in art, working as a layout artist for the Times saw Hunter also putting on the hat of journalist, creating for herself the mission of highlighting the work of other artists.  While she writes articles and researches the Arts page for the Sunday Times, she stops short of calling herself the page’s editor.  From her own opinions on art and commercialism, to interviews with both established and emerging artists, Hunter’s writing is bold, intelligent, mature and informed, a far cry from the ditzy teenaged-ness of her Facebook’s ‘About Me’ prose.  On the Guyana Women’s Artist Association exhibition held last year, she wrote:

“Nyota Killikelly remains dedicated to her studies of Guyana’s interior location, as is evident through her ‘Impressions of the Forest’ series. The title is quite appropriate, since she uses impressionist techniques throughout her work. Killikelly has a very liberating approach to her canvas. Her colours are rich and eff
ectively capture the lushness of Guyana’s forestry. Much like Jacobs, she too uses the palette knife quite frequently, if not exclusively, to achieve the desired look of her work. Jynell Osborne’s ‘Hush Mama’ and’ Spiritual Garden’ series are deep and evocative.”

On her own input work on display at the exhibition, she manages to be both self-effacing and objective, in the same article:
“Dominique Hunter, whose main preoccupation with art is centered around graphite drawing, has chosen to display just one piece. Although the piece is not among her recent works and was not done using graphite, it does indicate that interest in abstract and surreal subject matters was present early on.”

Hunter’s promotion of local art goes even beyond the Times’ Art page, extending to a Facebook fan page she has established to promote her own work.  Of the several photo galleries she has up, only one — with a few pieces displayed — features her own work.  The rest are galleries of events like the Mashramani exhibition launching; Godfrey Chin’s ‘Nostalgia’ exhibition; and the preparations for Mashramani.  She intends to use the page as a showcase for artistic events she says.  She just may have an audience — her Facebook fan page has quickly topped a hundred members, and this with no real effort at promotion.

Until now, however, there has never been any complete article on the artist herself.