Review by Molly Cranston Photos from Night Gallery
It’s hard to escape the interrogative gaze of the women that Danielle McKinney paints. Always alone, always in contemplation, they vibrate through the composed stillness of their jewel-deep, shadowy canvases. Each painting is a semi-autobiographical memento for McKinney, “Sometimes [my subjects] are me. Sometimes they’re an emotion I’m feeling. Sometimes they’re a story that my best friend told me. Sometimes it’s an observation of a feeling inside me that I’m processing.”
McKinney, who’s work previously centred around photography, began to focus on painting at the beginning of the pandemic last year, exhibiting the work in Smoke and Mirrors at Night Gallery this past June. She saw it as a way to look inwards instead of observing the world at a distance through an obstructive camera lens. McKinney’s cinematic eye is present however, and I can see these paintings as tableaux in a surrealist short film about a woman fleeing on horseback. The geranium red lips and fingernails are like a thread of little flames throughout the body of work, urgent and glamorous, signalling something.
McKinney luxuriates and stretches out in her work, and it’s a pleasure to absorb. She paints her subjects out of a black canvas, bringing them into light and being, placing them into sunset interiors with care. McKinney’s is a work of solace, inside, or behind closed doors.
Danielle McKinney’s Smoke and Mirrors
Imagination, 2021
acrylic on canvas
24 x 18 in
Review by Molly Cranston
Photos from Night Gallery
It’s hard to escape the interrogative gaze of the women that Danielle McKinney paints. Always alone, always in contemplation, they vibrate through the composed stillness of their jewel-deep, shadowy canvases. Each painting is a semi-autobiographical memento for McKinney, “Sometimes [my subjects] are me. Sometimes they’re an emotion I’m feeling. Sometimes they’re a story that my best friend told me. Sometimes it’s an observation of a feeling inside me that I’m processing.”
McKinney, who’s work previously centred around photography, began to focus on painting at the beginning of the pandemic last year, exhibiting the work in Smoke and Mirrors at Night Gallery this past June. She saw it as a way to look inwards instead of observing the world at a distance through an obstructive camera lens. McKinney’s cinematic eye is present however, and I can see these paintings as tableaux in a surrealist short film about a woman fleeing on horseback. The geranium red lips and fingernails are like a thread of little flames throughout the body of work, urgent and glamorous, signalling something.
McKinney luxuriates and stretches out in her work, and it’s a pleasure to absorb. She paints her subjects out of a black canvas, bringing them into light and being, placing them into sunset interiors with care. McKinney’s is a work of solace, inside, or behind closed doors.
Installation photo by Marten Elder
Four Walls, 2021
acrylic on canvas
24 x 18 in
Dreamer, 2021
acrylic on canvas
20 x 16 in
Twilight, 2021
acrylic on canvas
14 x 11 in
Haste, 2021
acrylic on canvas
20 x 16 in