Ideas about the cosmos, what it looks like, and what it is made of are ongoing topics of Dominique's research and investigations. While painting 'Luminous Matter' when she laid down the painterly acrylic underpainting, she was thinking about gestural abstraction. Then, she shifted to consider geometric abstraction, and with rulers and pencils drew the triangular formations. Next she pondered the color palette, and selected the vibrant hues of Holbein oils that define the entire series. Eventually she titled it, then read Michael Loewenstein's article on clusters in NASA's 'Imagine the Universe.' In it he states that the universe is made of two basic types of matter... luminous matter, and dark matter. He goes on to describe the luminous matter as see-able because it radiates unfathomably hot X-rays with temperatures of 10-1000 million degrees. Since reading this, Dominique imagines the 'Luminous Matter' paintings as possible snapshots of luminous matter.