People We Meet: Samuel Dominguez Has A Show

San Francisco CA

06 March, 2021

5:40 PM

Description

By Juan Carlos Lara, Mission Local March 6, 2021 Samuel Dominguez completed his largest mural to date last summer for Sutter Health with fellow artists Rayos Magos and Force 129. Photo by Juan Carlos Lara.For Samuel Dominguez, a local artist, things seem to be looking up. In 2009, Dominguez had to drop out of the Academy of Art University. While he met many different artists and learned a lot during his time there, he said, the tuition was more than he could afford. But over the past few years, the 30-year-old said his career prospects are finally starting to materialize. Dominguez did his first commissioned mural for Visitacion Valley Middle School in 2017, then returned for a second mural in 2018. Last June, Dominguez found a gig painting a mural through his girlfriend, Veronica. "She knew a friend who worked at Sutter Health and they were in the middle of getting a big art project together," Dominguez said. Veronica told her friend to throw Dominguez's name into the pool of possible artists, and they chose him and his two friends soon after. "That mural actually brought a lot of good feedback and opened up a lot of new doors," Dominguez said, adding that it was his largest mural so far. In December, Dominguez was invited to exhibit his work at the Voss Gallery, on 24th and Bartlett streets, his first exhibition at a professional gallery. "I've done a lot of smaller shows, little bars and stuff like that, but for a legit gallery this is the first," Dominguez said. On Thursday, Dominguez was outside of Voss Gallery working on a painting that would be shown in his second exhibition, beginning Friday. . "I wanted it to get people ready for better days of summer and spring, nice warm colors. It just seemed perfect for the days," Dominguez hopes. While his warm, colorful paintings are meant to celebrate the changing seasons, they are also meant to herald the city's reopening and, a return to normalcy i. The paintings also seem to match the artist's personal disposition. "It's mainly just supposed to look really nice and make you feel happy," Dominguez said with a laugh. In the near future, Dominguez hopes to set up an online store to display his art and sell more merchandise. "Just trying to stay busy. There's times where you kind of fall off and lose that spark," Dominguez said. "So any chance I get, I try to hop on and just stay busy." Mission Local covers San Francisco from the vantage point of the Mission, a neighborhood with all of the promise and problems of a major city. You can support Mission Local here.