Danielle Mckinney

Published with Norton Museum of Art.

Danielle Mckinney is known for her paintings that depict female subjects in moments of solitude. Published in conjunction with the traveling exhibition of the same name—the most comprehensive survey of the artist's practice to date—Shelter spans the last seven years of Mckinney's practice. Organized into five interconnected chapters—Glow, Witness, Nocturne, Exhale and Epilogue—these sections trace a progression from the physical encounter within the paintings' settings to the psychological grounding of a subject's deep self-actualization.
The women in Mckinney's paintings possess a timeless quality, often situated within familiar domestic scenes that evoke a subtle nostalgia. While viewers may recognize the intimate spaces or the emotions reflected in the subjects' knowing glances, the paintings also maintain a distance. Mckinney balances this deep emotional resonance with the essential unknowability of the subject, reminding us that the full familiarity of another's inner world remains outside our reach. This tension between the known experience and the private self creates a magnetic pull, transforming moments of quiet introspection into meditations on beauty, respite and the universal need for both.
Danielle Mckinney (born 1981) was born in Montgomery, Alabama, and is now based in New Jersey. Though she painted from a young age, Mckinney was formally trained as a photographer. Her work is held in the collections of the Norton Museum of Art, Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Studio Museum in Harlem, among others.