BY JESSICA SHEARER
WALTHAM, Mass. — In 2020, when the world tripped face-first into confinement, Danielle Mckinney started to paint. Trained as a photographer, the New Jersey-based artist began articulating lush interiors — first in acrylics, then oils — populated by solitary Black women in states of unrestrained relaxation. On view at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Mckinney’s first solo American museum exhibition, Tell Me More, charts the artist’s five-year journey. It renders a particularly feminine brand of freedom — one that exalts rest as a form of beauty by enshrining private moments of ease within small, intimate canvases.
Painted a muted pink and lit low, the single room that houses Tell Me More is not unlike one of Mckinney’s interiors, with deeply tufted blue benches offering spaces to lounge. Were one to do so, they could take in the whole of the space at once, making the clever curatorial choices more apparent. The show is not, for example, hung chronologically; rather, the paintings are grouped by the subject’s particular manner of repose, never more than three to a wall. On one, figures are sprawled on couches; on the next, they’re ensconced in white beds. Whereas Mckinney’s figures typically have their eyes gently closed, their attention turned inward, here, two works from 2021, “Reading Room” and “Secret Garden,” break the fourth wall to make eye contact directly with the viewer, creating a jarring moment of disruption that breaks the spell of the room. One feels as though someone has slammed a door. In fact, in only one other work on view, “Shelter” (2023), are the subject’s eyes open at all. Snuggled into a thick cream sweater, chin resting on palm, she stares softly off past the butterfly poised on her poppy-painted fingertips like a cigarette.
Mckinney determines the composition of her paintings by creating a template with clippings from vintage magazines, and works like “Shelter” — along with the other two on what I’ll dub the “smoking wall,” “Moth” (2021) and the titular “Tell Me More” (2023) — are great examples of how she employs the more traditional elements of beauty found in the fashion sphere: the close cropping, lithe bodies, and flashes of adornment (such as her trademark cadmium nails) emanating from hazy, darkened spaces.
In more recent works, including two created expressly for this show, “From Square One” (2025) and “Fate” (2025), she appears to be drawing more from the art historical references that also inspire her work, particularly modernist masters such as Picasso and Matisse, with loose, bright strokes reflecting the abandon exhibited by her subjects. Here, Mckinney gestures with greater confidence, orchestrating increasingly opulent spaces that hold — but do not confine — Black women luxuriating in unguarded time alone. Her canvases, much like the exhibition itself, identify contemplation as the ultimate decadence, arguing that moments of exquisite beauty, lavished upon oneself, are both a luxury and a lifeline.
Danielle Mckinney: Tell Me More continues at the Rose Art Museum (415 South Street, Waltham, Massachusetts) through January 4, 2026. The exhibition was curated by Henry and Lois Foster Director and Chief Curator Dr. Gannit Ankori.
