Gina Dominique

Gina Dominique is a New York based artist-academic. She has had 13 solo shows, and has participated in more than 50 group exhibitions across the US and in England. Dominique's accolades include the Corcoran Gallery of Art's Alma Thomas Painting Award, a City University of New York-Lehman College Fellowship Award, and a Delta College Barstow-Frevel Scholarly Achievement Award. She has attended residencies at Liverpool John Moores University (2022, 2023, 2024), 18th Street Arts Center (2019), Tamarind Institute Collaborative Lithography Workshop (1994), and Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts (1978).

Dominique is a tenured Associate Professor of Art at City University of New York's Lehman College, where from 2013-16, she served as the School of Arts & Humanities Associate Dean. She is a PhD candidate in Transart Institute for Creative Research's practice-led Philosophy of Art program at Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool. She earned her MFA from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM,  her BFA from George Washington University's Corcoran School of the Arts & Design, Washington, DC, and attended the first two-years of her BFA at Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. Born Gina Dominique Shorto, m. Gina Dominique Hersey, she is originally from Johnstown, PA.

Research Interests

I aspire to make evocative, relevant artworks, which almost always leads me to paint abstractly. My work is indebted to developments within 20th Century Western abstraction, now acknowledged as a pre-feminist painting genre. I am particularly inspired by what is broadly referred to as 'painterly abstraction' and 'post-painterly abstraction', and by research I do to teach painting, ancient through contemporary art histories, art methods and theories, and color theory. Philosophically I am positioned within feminist aesthetics, and methodologically I am an autotheorist. Color often drives my painting, which I usually begin with acrylics on gessoed canvases or linens, and sometimes complete in oils.

In my current portfolio, 'AutoAbstraction,' some of the pieces are executed in a gesturally abstract, graffiti-like way. Others are done in a geometric, non-objective or minimalist style... and most lend themselves to psychosexual and/or abstracted figurative interpretations. My palettes are in part inspired by my investigations into the Fitzpatrick Skin Type Scale or SPF chart, a Pantone SkinTone Booklet, various beauty product promotional color charts, several paint brands premixed paint colors, and by my own olive complexion.

Historically, I am influenced by spiritualist painting, including cosmic diagrams and tantra painting, and by the works of hundreds of 20th and 21st Century abstract painters. Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), Hans Hoffman (1880-1966), Alma Thomas (1891-1978), Willem deKooning (1904-1997), Phillip Guston (1913-1980), Gene Davis (1920-1985), Joan Mitchell (1925-1992), Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008), Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Cy Twombly (1928-2011), Howard Hodgkin (1932-2017), Louise Fishman (1939-2021), Elizabeth Murray (1940-2007), Sigmar Polke (1941-2010), Susan Rothenberg (1945-2020), Anselm Kiefer (1945- ), Sean Scully (1945- ), and Rita Ackerman (1968- ) are among my favorites.  

Motivated by color and identity, last year I started a series titled Color Coded. Its color palettes are influenced by the Fitzpatrick Skin Type Scale, used since the 1970s to determine SPF levels required to prevent sunburn, by its predecessor the Von Luschan Scale, developed 100 years prior to classify ethnic populations via skin color and race, and by various beauty industry product promotional color charts.

My own complexion lines up with the charts middle shades labeled “olive” or “tan”, which led me to mix the under-paintings fleshy olive mid-tones. I inherited my complexion from my parents, both born to their respective olive-skinned parents, who were marginalized for being “impure”, lesser-than Mediterraneans. My great-grandparents and grandparents were among the 5 million southern Italian refugees to the US and 30 million globally, who between 1880-1940 permanently migrated.

https://ginadominique.com

https://www.ginadominique.com/process-blog

https://bmoreart.com/event/gina-dominique-skin-deep-on-abstract-painting-the-nature-of-beauty