Danielle Mckinney: Haven

Danielle Mckinney’s (b. 1981) interior scenes capture moments of human introspection and intimacy with painterly lyricism. Mckinney builds her compositions from an all-black canvas, resulting in scenes emerging from darkness in chiaroscuro fashion. Like dioramas, these domestic spaces are carefully composed; the artist constructs her interiors with sourced material from magazines or social media. The atmospheric compositions are interspersed with shimmering highlights of colour: the faint glow of a lit cigarette, held by protagonists with brightly coloured lips and fiercely painted fingernails. The figures, exclusively Black and female, are seen cherishing moments of solitude: reading, smoking, or simply lost in contemplation. As a trained photographer, Mckinney arranges her subjects cinematographically, with an astute awareness of the gaze and its political power. Her figures command the space in which they find themselves, opening opportunities for endless narrative strands and self-exploration.

‘Danielle Mckinney’s canvases don’t simply ask to be looked upon. They ask viewers to breathe alongside them, inviting us to inhale and exhale in rhythm with their languid figures and supple layers of paint. Their brushstrokes seem to breathe, too: They are thick yet soft, applied with a looseness and freedom that elicits a meditative air of unburdening. Set in placid interiors, Mckinney’s paintings feature Black women stealing moments of quietude and interiority that solicit a similar stillness from viewers as we slip into the shadows of the canvas.’

Z. Hopkins, ‘In Danielle Mckinney's Lyrical Paintings, Black Women Reclaim Domestic Space,’ in Artsy, 31 October 2022