Alexandra Doms was only in grade school when she realized her true calling.

“In fifth grade, I was sitting there going, ‘I better get serious about something’,” she remembered with a smile. “And I realized I wasn’t all that good at anything except for art.”

Doms, 23, pursued that passion throughout middle school, high school and college and is now a professional illustrator who contributes to The Butler Art Center. Her work will be on display starting tonight at the center’s annual Christmas Show and Sale.

Doms lives in Worthington, just a stone’s throw from Butler County.

“The cool thing is I can actually look out my front window and the hill next door is Butler County, so I’m very close to Butler County,” she said. “My family has shopped here, been here forever.”

Doms lives with her mother, Kimberly, and her brother, Liam, 20. She credits her family with getting behind her artistic endeavors.

“Not that I didn’t have to prove that I wanted it, but they were so supportive,” Doms said. “I draw a lot of inspiration from them.”

Doms first brought her talents to the world in the seventh grade at a festival in Kittanning. However, her first big break came at an art show hosted by Indiana (Pa.) University in 2010.

She had no idea the show was going to have a panel of judges, but her submission won the event.

“It was kind of solidarity that, ‘Yes, you picked the right path,’ because I had already chosen what (college) I was going to go to, and it was in art,” she said. “And I was like, ‘OK, you can do this; this is good.’”

The artwork itself — an oil painting of a woman wearing sunglasses with a cityscape reflected in them — helped define Doms’ work.

“That painting itself kind of skyrocketed me into what I do today because it was a portrait ... it was people,” she said.

Doms graduated from Kittanning High School in 2011 and attended the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design in Lancaster. At the time, she was the only student from the region to attend the college, which had 200 students enrolled in her class. The challenge of higher learning motivated Doms.

“I was suddenly with all these people who were at my level; they were above my level, and it was something to strive for again,” she said. “It was very invigorating in that respect.”

Doms chose to major in illustration.

“In my art I love to tell stories and I love to illustrate things that can never happen, or worlds that can never happen,” she said.

She called her approach “problem solving.”

“When it comes right down to the painting, how do I portray this character, what colors do I choose, how big is it, how small is it, all these extra little problem solving (things) that you have to do in order to find a successful piece,” Doms said. “Because you sit down and you don’t paint everything at once.”

Doms graduated in 2015. She moved back in with her family and began to work on a job-by-job basis out of her home studio.

Doms applies her philosophy of problem solving as a professional, which has included editing art for CD and book covers and painting holiday cards, human and animal portraits, and doing logo designs.

She loves painting portraits in particular.

“We’re engaged by each other’s faces,” she said. “That’s just built into our biology that we see faces in everything, so a face is so compelling and it’s so much of a challenge and it’s so fun to me.”

While working on a contractual, job-by-job basis is not the most stable way to live, Doms said her dreams keep her focused.

“I have goals that I want to achieve through it,” she said. “I’d love Lucasfilm to call me up and be like, ‘You’re the new costume designer for the next three movies.’”

Regardless, she loves her work. She works one day per week as a secretary to pay off her student loans, and the job has taught her a valuable lesson.

“I don’t hate doing it but I hate that I have to do it,” she said. “I hate that’s what it comes down to, to pay my student loans. That’s not so glamorous.

“I just don’t want to be miserable. There are so many people out there that do jobs that are miserable just to make money, just to complain that they’re miserable. I could live in a shack, but as long as I’m doing something that I love that I feel is rewarding, I think I’ll be all right.”

Doms’ work goes beyond a brush and a canvas. She does much of her work digitally, painting on a pressure-sensitive tablet. Doms embraces the digital age for how it allows her to network with other artists from across the nation.

“It’s amazing to be able to e-mail somebody and have them respond like that,” she said. “So I can talk to artists who are actually successful, largely successful, and I can ask them, ‘What do you think I should do?’”

Doms also plans a foray into knife artistry once she has a knife forge properly set up, and also makes jewelry. Some of that jewelry will be on display at the Christmas Show. Doms’ paintings, including fruits and vegetables on textures ranging from old book pages to newspapers, also will be displayed.

“They were fun,” Doms said of creating the jewelry and paintings. “If they can bring a smile to somebody else’s face and liven up their kitchen, I’m cool with that.”

Ultimately, Doms wants her art to have a deeper impact.

“If nothing else, I’d like them to go, ‘Wow, that’s a nice painting,’ but deeper down I’d like them to look at it and see that there’s something else going on, and it stirs a thought in them,” she said. “It stirs them to think a little bit about it. Probably at the end of the day, I’d like them to wonder what’s beyond the edges of the painting.”