Dominic Chambers

Dominic Chambers’s saturated, surreal paintings give radical softness and power to scenes of Black leisure. The artist—whose narrative influences include magical realism, Greek mythology, and W.E.B. Du Bois—depicts his figures reading and lounging in verdant landscapes. Chambers often coats his canvases in varying tones of a single hue, gravitates towards bold primary colors, and layers a veil of raindrop patterns over his compositions. Chambers graduated with an MFA from Yale and has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Turin, among other cities. Chambers’s focus on Black freedom and joy informs all aspects of his painting practice, from palette to process. His washes of paint, which can veil his subjects, preserve the autonomy of Chambers’s figures and protect them from an audience’s intrusive gaze. Chambers told Artsy that his subject “is engaging in a space where he matters. This is his space.”