In pensive, cinematic portraits, painter Danielle Mckinney (b. 1981; Montgomery, AL) captures solitary female protagonists in moments of leisure and respite. Set in dream-like domestic interiors, Mckinney's figures sprawl across unmade beds, lounge in overstuffed armchairs, and splay on the floor in various states of undress. They smoke, read, and nap; immersed in their own worlds, ensconced in their own space, these women are consumed with rest, with pleasure, with leisure, with being. Hinting subtly at the busy routine of these figures' lives, Mckinney withholds their motivations, their thoughts, their comings and goings—in turn captivating viewers with narratives implied in elusive shadows and revealing details.
Mckinney's practice is an ongoing exploration of portraiture, color, and composition informed by an expansive dialogue with art history. Her figures emerge from deep, dark backgrounds reminiscent of Zurbarán's haunting portraits of saints and martyrs. With gestural brushstrokes and flickers of brilliant pink and orange oil paint, Mckinney evokes the work of Matisse while the striking quality of light in her scenes—and its narrative implications—echo the paintings of Vermeer. Perhaps most notably, Mckinney draws on the intense, unsettling voyeurism of Hopper with her masterfully-crafted interiors, occasionally borrowing his compositions directly, yet filling them with her own figures, her own details, her own vision. In these paintings, Mckinney ultimately enchants viewers with her expert handling of paint, the subtle emotional pull of her figures, and her radical commitment to beauty.
Mckinney's work is found in museum collections around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; the Dallas Museum of Art, TX; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, among others. Her work has been featured in a number of group exhibitions, including The Time Is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure curated by Ekow Eshun at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Tending and Dreaming: Stories from the Collection at the San José Museum of Art, CA; Woman in a Rowboat at the Olivia Foundation, Mexico City; When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting curated by Koyo Kouoh at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town, South Africa; and IN A DREAM YOU SAW A WAY TO SURVIVE AND YOU WERE FULL OF JOY curated by Robin K. Williams at The Contemporary Austin, TX. Mckinney earned a BFA at Atlanta College of Art in 2005 and an MFA at Parsons School of Design in 2013. The artist lives and works in Jersey City, NJ.