Ryan Bachoo
Lead Editor–Newsgathering
ryan.bachoo@cnc3.co.tt
It was Pablo Picasso, the great Spanish painter, who once remarked, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”
Dominique Robinson encountered that problem. As a child, she fell in love with art. As she grew past her teenage years, the busyness of life shelved this once great passion as she focused on other, more adult things.
Ironically, it was through another child, her three-year-old son, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, that she would rediscover this one lost treasure in her life–her love for painting. “During COVID, I was homeschooling my son, and I got a connection back to art by doing lots of arts and crafts with him. Something sparked there,” she told the Sunday Guardian WE Magazine.
That spark would ignite. Robinson started a page on social media called Beyond Creativity. She then registered it as a business. “I really didn’t know what I was going to do with it. I just knew I loved arts and crafts,” she said.
It would snowball. A mentor recommended her for a Sip and Paint event. Thereafter, she would host several such events on her own which included children, retirees and sometimes friends. She’s been doing it consistently for the past two years.
Now, art, which once fuelled a personal passion for Robinson, is the means by which she will help vulnerable groups in society. This year, she is aiming to take her programme to schools to expose students to art. She will also do the same for retirees.
In setting this goal for herself, the 34-year-old spoke of the need to help children discover their love for art, saying, “Somebody who is very creative in a primary school that may not have an art programme, I want to be able to give them that opportunity for them to shine. Every child has a skill where they can advance in certain areas. It might not be academic, but what if they have a creative bug in them?”
Robinson said there are many benefits to students who are exposed to art at an early age, some of which can seem trivial but can have an outsized influence on their growth. She said students learn the importance of sharing the instruments, it creates an environment where they are helped with their fine motor skills and gives them an outlet to clear their heads from whatever troubles they may have.
“Art has so many healing aspects of it. The benefits are countless,” she added.
Robinson would know. She is dyslexic and struggled in her early years at school particularly when it came to reading. “I used to be that child in a classroom setting instead of doing work I used to draw. I would be drawing constantly. I literally discovered my love for art through issues at school,” she said.
That love for art transformed when she moved on to Corpus Christi College in Diego Martin. One of her favourite artists is her former A-Level art teacher, Donna Clarke. Her mother was also a teacher, and she feels that is the inspiration behind her willingness to expose art to both the young and old in T&T.
She said the old in society must not be forgotten as art has enormous benefits for them even in their later years. Robinson added, “It just gives them a better quality of life. They are able to express themselves in a kind of way that is a little bit different from how they normally do stuff. It gives them more confidence too. One of them was so proud that they created a necklace out of a magazine.”
Picasso the artist also said once, “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” That is what Robinson aims to do with her programme.
Now, she wants to share the benefits of art with those who may need it just as much as she needed it. She went further in saying, “Whenever I had difficult times, I used to turn to art as a way of coping with whatever troubles I had pertaining to my academics, and it helped me a lot. During my college years, it was a creative outlet for me, and I was able to learn so much.”
Robinson’s mission is to dispense the notion that art is not for everyone, or at least, it is for those who have a gift for it.
“It’s a way of expressing yourself in a unique way. It’s a skill you are learning and there are certain fundamentals and technical things you learn with it. But mostly, it builds confidence. It relaxes you,” the Diego Martin resident said.
Far away from the art galleries of Paris and even Port-of-Spain, and beyond the professional painters whose works are adored, Robinson wants to make painting an everyday activity for everyday people, much like Vincent van Gogh’s mission, daring people to silence the voice within them that said they couldn’t paint, by simply painting.
