Danielle Mckinney
Portraits of solitude
“Figures are a way for me to find solace or comfort in these interior environments.”
Intimate and contemplative, Danielle Mckinney paints moments of female solitude. Using acrylic paint on canvas, she puts single figures in homely places. They’re always occupied, whether smoking a cigarette or sitting deep in thought. She draws attention to physical details, using luminous colours. The photographic backgrounds, faces and fingernails are often highlighted in bright orange. She says, "I can’t undo that photographic training – it’s embedded in how I begin a painting". She uses photos of Art Deco interiors from Pinterest and Instagram as a starting point. American painters Barkley...
Intimate and contemplative, Danielle Mckinney paints moments of female solitude. Using acrylic paint on canvas, she puts single figures in homely places. They’re always occupied, whether smoking a cigarette or sitting deep in thought. She draws attention to physical details, using luminous colours. The photographic backgrounds, faces and fingernails are often highlighted in bright orange. She says, "I can’t undo that photographic training – it’s embedded in how I begin a painting". She uses photos of Art Deco interiors from Pinterest and Instagram as a starting point. American painters Barkley L. Hendricks and Kerry James Marshall inspire her. Both had a huge influence on Black American portraiture.
Mckinney's paintings show the importance of private rituals – religious or otherwise. She says, "throughout my life, I’ve struggled to find where I fit in". Rituals provided a space for Mckinney to exist, calmly. This sentiment is reflected in the senses she paints. While several women hold crucifix necklaces, some are busy with beauty regimes. In Face Mask with Prayer (2021), a topless figure in a face mask sits on a bed with a painting of Christ in the background. In Mckinney's world, the bedroom is as good a space for silent meditation as the church.
Danielle Joy Mckinney (she/her) was born 1981 in Alabama, United States. She now lives and works in New Jersey.
As a child Danielle Mckinney made collages from magazines: “I would build shoebox houses and paint inside them. I’d make little furniture, and take a little figure and put her in that house.”
While studying at Parsons School for Design, she took photos of people. Although she always painted on the side, she ditched the camera in favour of painting when the pandemic hit.
