Right Now with Dominique Cheminais
Dominique Cheminais on merging art and authorism.
Over the past nine months, Dominique Cheminais has become a prolific surrealist painter in the Cape Town art scene.
After dedicating the past 10 years to her creative writing career, the multidisciplinary artist has thrown herself head-first into the fine art world, reigniting her love for painting with a solo show at THK Gallery and a notable display at the 2023 Investec Cape Town Art Fair. She’ll soon be combining her passions in an upcoming project – releasing her sixth book, Indefinite Holiday, alongside a fresh body of artwork to illustrate it.
Cheminais’ paintings are notoriously bizarre and fabulist in appearance. Inside the vibrant walls of her studio, huge swaths of canvas sprout writhing limbs, vivid brushstrokes, and a host of simultaneously unsettling and seductive characters – each one as deliciously convoluted as the last.
Although Cheminais has always been creative, merging the characters from her written works with visual art is a new development in her career. We caught up with Dom in-studio to chat about her work and find out more about the upcoming release of Indefinite Holiday.
EK: When I look at what you’ve accomplished in the past few months, I get vertigo. Where does your energy to paint come from?
DC: I think I’m just making up for lost time. In the ten-year gap since I last painted, the images in my mind have only been allowed to exist in words and imagination. Whereas now, there’s a whole new language I can use to express my ideas, and I feel like I can’t paint fast enough.
EK: Your solo show at THK Gallery was called Things Done While Dreaming. Do dreams play a significant role in your work?
DC: Dreams are integral to my work. I’m that annoying person at parties telling people about the crazy dream I had last night. Colourful kittens hiding in the mud under a broken windmill. Black dolphins beached on the sand, the ocean pink and green. Dreams are useful when you want to abstract reality as a writer.
EK: Painting can be a seasonal process. What does it feel like to have emerged from a 10-year hiatus into this new era of productivity?
DC: I never imagined that I would ever go back to painting, so even the desire to paint feels like receiving an incredible gift. It’s like I’m allowed to relive the excitement of inventing my characters all over again, and also allow myself to create what feels right in the moment.
EK: What can we expect from Indefinite Holiday? And when is it due to be published?
DC: Indefinite Holiday explores desire and the disappointment that often follows it. The book blends the satirical and the magical in a downhill adventure of loss and the longing for something, anything other than what we have – and the belief that we deserve more.
Indefinite Holiday will be published in the US later this year through Pig Roast Publishing.
Words by Eden King
Photos by Nick Gordon