Dominique Payette

There is an accomplished air of maturity to the paintings of Dominique Payette. The viewer is presented with highly nuanced textured surfaces that bear witness to sweeping brushstrokes, scratches and stipplings. Payette employs an almost monochromatic palette, allowing small windows and glimpses of earthy reds and ochre to glimmer through her complex compositions in blacks, greys and whites. Payette’s lines form shimmering constructions of geometric shapes, remaining ambiguous in their abstraction so as to place the viewer in a state of curiosity – are these windows and walls, do they relate to a landscape or are they a visual guide to the inside of Payette’s mind? Densely structured, the paintings project a feeling of solidity and balance. Emotionally the muted palette with its flashes of color would seem to denote sobriety and sorrow. However, the paintings are not the wildly emotive canvases of Abstract Expressionism but exquisitely controlled and explorative works of understated beauty.