
Biography
Domenica Hoare is a Brisbane-based visual artist and a graduate of Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, where she attained a Bachelor of Fine Art (Class One Honours) and a Master of Visual Art. Her practice is in drawing, watercolour, and printmaking (lithography, intaglio). She focuses on figurative drawing and drawing from nature.
For as long as I can remember, I have created art from an innate need to draw; however, I now realise that making art for me is also about deep ideas, feelings, and concerns that have sometimes eluded verbal expression, or even acknowledgement, yet force their way through my work, nonetheless. The images I create are of the familiar: the human figure, domestic interiors, small objects, garden settings, landscapes, streetscapes, and built structures that speak a quiet language of their own that I try to tap into. Reflecting on this output has been both revelatory and empowering as I have gained the realisation that themes in my work go to the complexities of living. It is on the mundane, daily stages of our lives that they are mostly lived, and I see that I am addressing the profound through the undervalued, unexamined plain.
I have always felt an unsettling concern about what will happen in the future. This is reflected in a sense of unease that is destabilising for the viewer. Often my works are quiet, but hang a question or more in the loaded atmosphere of each image. There is now this self-realised turn in my work as it opens to the possibility of connection with the viewer about all kinds of questions. I do look to the present and the future with (guarded) hope and optimism. Though stemming from the personal, my art has universal themes. Preoccupations in my work are to examine fault lines in human relationships, and to expose tensions in human-nature relationships.
I admire and appreciate the work of many artists and illustrators, but particularly Kiki Smith, Paula Rego, Jörg Schmeisser, Shaun Tan, Juliette Aristides, and Lisbeth Zwerger. Their ideas, subjects, styles, stories, techniques, use of colour, and imagination are teaching and learning tools for me.