{"id":694555,"date":"2026-06-10T00:27:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T00:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/694555\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T00:27:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T00:27:13","slug":"danielle-mckinneys-portraits-of-black-women-at-rest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/694555\/","title":{"rendered":"Danielle Mckinney’s Portraits of Black Women at Rest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Art Review<\/a><\/p>\n

Each figure in her paintings luxuriates in the dreaminess of space belonging to her and her alone.<\/p>\n


\n \"Channelle
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Danielle Mckinney, “Recess” (2026) (photo Channelle Chevelle Russell\/Hyperallergic)<\/p>\n

I met visual artist Danielle Mckinney at the edge of the world in a place where survival required my invention of a counting game: over the course of nine months, how many Black people did I encounter weekly?<\/p>\n

Hemmed in by the North Sea on one side and medieval ruins on the other, I was freshly 23, just months into a yearlong master\u2019s program on Scotland\u2019s east coast, and alone \u2014 yet even this was not a word big enough. Lonely and desperately so, I spent much of my time abroad, and since then wondering how I might name that inexplicable sense of being a walking, talking open wound: a young Black woman abroad tortured by a dual sense of being hypervisible and passed on, passed over, daily like a ghost no one recognizes. Gradually coming undone by the endless intimacy of my own company, in that time privacy was both salvation and vice, and my room a generous purveyor of both. However tiny, dusty, and always too warm my apartment was \u2014 it was mine: a space small enough, private enough, to hold my life in its most minor key, to allow the total giving of myself over to a feverish need to disappear.<\/p>\n

Some three years and a lifetime later, Mckinney\u2019s exhibition Forest for the Trees, currently showing at Chelsea\u2019s Marianne Boesky Gallery, returns me to that tiny Scottish apartment where, sinking without words to name the weight, her portraits of solitary Black female figures became the lifeline that lifted me out. Shucking the gaze, turning inwards to herself, even on exhibition, the unshakable constancy of each figure luxuriating in the dreaminess of space belonging to her and her alone vibrates with an immutable sense of being alone but never lonely. In that small room and beyond it, Mckinney\u2019s work opened a window towards the possibilities and ambivalences of solitude and private, domestic space for Black women, where being by and with myself did not also have to mean miserable.<\/p>\n

\u201cLonely, ain\u2019t it?\u201d
\u201cYes. But my lonely is mine.\u201d
\u2014Toni Morrison, Sula (1973)\"\"Installation view of Danielle Mckinney, Forest for the Trees (photo Jason Wyche, courtesy Boesky Gallery)<\/p>\n

Set against and alongside ongoing demands on the political and ethical energies of Black women during the everyday crisis of today\u2019s political, cultural, and social climate, Mckinney\u2019s vision in Forest for the Trees splits: the first room sports a series of loosely defined figures in watercolor. Watercolors, Mckinney shared during the May 30 artist talk with Norton Museum of Art curator Rachel Gustafson, lent a kind of \u201cfreeness\u201d to the human form. (The exhibition coincides with a survey of Mckinney\u2019s work at the Norton<\/a>, running through October 4). Away from the watercolors, down a rich green hallway towards the larger gallery space, Mckinney\u2019s oil-based portraits depict women within varying scenes of leisure and repose as they all turn away from the demanding eye or, perhaps, just turn inwards to the self.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Left to right: Danielle Mckinney, “Make Believe” and “Milk and Honey” (both 2026) (photos Channelle Chevelle Russell\/Hyperallergic)<\/p>\n

Across the series, Mckinney\u2019s trove of symbols further reveals a cinematic fascination with indulgence and adornment in otherwise spare, singular portraits. Where hands are present, figures sport invariable sets of bright red nails, a motif Mckinney largely accredits to her taste for \u201ca touch of color.\u201d Eyes within the portraits are obscured and further adorned by metallic accents and shades of teal, brushes of pink and spots of shimmering foil. Alongside red nails and accented metallic foil, cigarette smoke often spirals up wisplike within these portraits, creating warm meditative scenes further underlit by a steady effusion of lamplight and glimmering light fixtures.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the end of the artist talk, Mckinney shared her somewhat conspiratorial sense that her pieces would keep getting smaller and smaller. In her attention to scale, I couldn\u2019t help but remember that small room at the edge of the world where I first met her, when my feelings, too large and still yet too remote from me, demanded a space intimate enough to hold them. I am older now and the rooms of my life much larger \u2014 yet when I am alone, seeking the familiar comfort of my own intimacies, Mckinney\u2019s portraits return me to those scenes of the solitary Black feminine self at rest, where notions of solitude and privacy remain just that: solely my own.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Danielle Mckinney, “Ascent” (2026) (photo Channelle Chevelle Russell\/Hyperallergic)\"\"Danielle Mckinney, “Seven Rays” (2026) – (\u00a9 Danielle Mckinney and courtesy of the artist and Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen)<\/p>\n

Danielle Mckinney, Forest for the Trees<\/a> continues at Marianne Boesky Gallery (509 West 24th Street, Manhattan) through June 13. Danielle Mckinney: Shelter<\/a> continues at the Norton Museum of Art (1450 S Dixie Hwy, West Palm Beach, Florida) through October 4. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Art Review Each figure in her paintings luxuriates in the dreaminess of space belonging to her and her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":["post-694555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}