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Friday, July 18, 2025

Dominique Robinson’s mission: Art for everyday people

by

Ryan Bachoo
503 days ago
20240303

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.


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