The art of the sale

By Olivia Bradbury/Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Dominique Hurley is originally from Ottawa, Ontario, and has been living in Newfoundland for over a decade. She plans to move back to Ottawa later this year, and came up with a way to decrease the luggage she will need to take — she’s decided to put her entire collection of paintings up for sale, welcoming offers regardless of their proximity to the asking price.

Hurley has been creating art since the 1980s.

“I needed it. I needed it for my own sanity,” she said of the drive to create,

She describes herself as hypersensitive, an empath sensitive to energies.

“The more my work week was stressful, the more I needed to go home and paint on the weekends… A studio was not only my therapy room, it was my playroom, it was my teacher, it was my temple,” she said.

Hurley has been selling her art since 1988. She has a certificate of art and design and a master’s degree in education. She used to work as an English as a Second Language teacher, which led her to travel the world — she has lived on three continents and in five different provinces. In 2014, she became a full-time artist after a year of studying at the Vienna Academy of Visionary Art in Austria.

Hurley said she practices intuitive painting. “I never know what a piece is going to look like when I start,” she said. “So it’s layer by layer. Sometimes it’s as I paint that the piece evolves and talks to me and decides what it wants to become, and sometimes it’s based on visions I received in meditation.”

She describes her art as “energy-infused,” by which she means she channels energy through herself and into her art. “The idea comes through me,” she said. “It’s not of me, it’s through me.”

While were no accurate labels that existed for her type of art when she began making it, she said some have been created since that could describe it, including “intuitive painting,” “visionary art,” and “energism art.”

She offers intuitive painting workshops, as well. “It’s all about inner transformation, it’s all about connecting to your higher self, connecting to something, like where your body, mind, soul wants to evolve to next,” said Hurley.

Because her 92-year-old father experienced a heart issue over the Christmas holidays, Hurley has decided to move back to Ottawa to be his companion and caretaker. As her father plans to sell his house and declutter, she did not want to bring her large painting collection with her. She hopes to fly to Ottawa with just a few suitcases and her bicycle.

Hurley said during meditation she was guided to put her collection of 56 paintings up for sale and allow people to make offers.

“I’ve never been misled any time I’ve followed my guidance,” said Hurley, “and so it might not be something the business world or art world would look at positively perhaps, and yet I’m thoroughly excited and the connections that I’ve had already with the few people who’ve put in offers have been really heartwarming and beautiful.”

She is glad to be selling her paintings this way rather than via an auction, she added, as auctions focus on money and numbers. “This way, every painting will end up, I know, where it’s meant to and it’s not about who gives the highest offer, it’s about where the painting’s meant to be.”

Hurley plans to use meditation to choose what offers to accept. “This is really more of a heart-centred connection versus a commercial transaction,” she said.

Some people have offered close to the asking price for some pieces, and others have offered barely enough to cover the cost of materials, but Hurley said, in the end, the total amount made from selling all 56 paintings may equal what she makes in a year or more. She is going to do the first round of offer acceptances during the first week of March. For any pieces that do not have offers at that point, she will keep the sale going and accept offers weekly until they are all sold. Due to her impending move, the sooner they sell, the better. Ideally, she would like them all to be sold by the end of March. Anyone interested in perusing the sale can find it on Hurley’s website, dominiquehurley.com.

St. John’s artist Dominique Hurley with one of the 56 works of striking colour and patterns that she is selling before leaving Newfoundland to return to Ontario to care for her elderly dad.