Danielle Mckinney

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The Great Women Artists

Katy Hessel

168 episodes

5 days ago

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is the esteemed curator, author, and expert in photography, Madga Keany. Currently the Head Curator of International Art at the National Gallery of Art, Canberra, Magda was most recently Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, and before that, Senior Curator, Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery London, where she lead the realisation of a major re-presentation of the Photographs Collection as part of the museum’s rehaul. Keany has curated shows and published texts on Australian art, design and social history, photography that ranges from the Victorian period to fashion, conflict and portraiture, solo presentations of portraits by Irving Penn, among many others. She has written for the groundbreaking Know My Name project, that put women artists in Australia on a global stage as well as for Cindy Sherman, A World History of Women Photographers, and more. …but it was her exhibition last year that really grabbed my attention: Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream in', that brought together the two photographers working 100 years apart, from very different worlds, circumstances and contexts, but which showed how these pioneering women shaped the medium, with their dreamlike pictures imbued with beauty, symbolism, classicism, transformation and more… So today, I couldn’t be more excited to delve into the life of the 19th century photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron, who, aged 49 in 1863, picked up a camera and, largely self-taught, crafted her distinct bohemian style pictures with that hazy sepia glow, that proved to not only be influential in Victorian Britain, but have a huge impact on photography at large. As Cameron once said: “My aspirations are to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High Art by combining the real & Ideal & sacrificing nothing of Truth by all possible devotion to poetry and beauty.” And I can’t wait to find out more. People mentioned: Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879) Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) John Herschel (1792–1871) Artworks: Julia Margaret Cameron, Annie, 1864; https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O81145/annie-photograph-cameron-julia-margaret/ Julia Margaret Cameron, Pomona, 1872; https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1433678/pomona-photograph-cameron-julia-margaret/ Julia Margaret Cameron, Thomas Carlyle, 1867; https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/269434 Julia Margaret Cameron, The Astronomer, 1867; https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1433637/the-astronomer-photograph-cameron-julia-margaret/ Julia Margaret Cameron, Ellen Terry, at the age of sixteen, 1864 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/269433 -- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

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Danielle Mckinney

The Great Women Artists

34 minutes 46 seconds

6 months ago

Danielle Mckinney

I am so excited to say that my guest on the GWA Podcast is one of the most anticipated and exciting painters working today – Danielle McKinney. Born in Alabama, and based in New Jersey, McKinney is hailed for her small, contemplative, introspective and intimate paintings of women. Caught in moments of rest, relaxation and repose, McKinney’s works, to my mind, are a collective portrait of the joys of female solitude. Painted on a black-coloured canvas emphasising the twilight time in which they appear to be set, McKinney’s seductive and alluring paintings situate the figure swept up in their own world. Although she uses only a few thick, washy strokes of paint, each has significance, whether it be to evoke a dress, a hint of a cigarette flame, or a glow of light under a low-lit lamp in their soft-focus interiors. Never fussy or over-painted, they show just how much something so simple like a woman in her private space can be so powerful. While we aren’t told much about them, it’s up to us as the viewers to imagine their lives. I like to read stories into them, trying to understand where they are, and on what day and which time, they can also be read as interior moods. Full of atmosphere, it’s almost like you can hear a soundtrack of Sade blasting softly in the background – one of McKinney’s great inspirations. But painting wasn’t always something she had pursued. While she had a great love of the medium in childhood, McKinney’s training is in photography, having graduated from Parsons School of Design in 2013. Fascinated by humanity and movement, and the framing of an image, McKinney had a career as a photographer before turning to painting during the Covid-19 pandemic. Shut inside her New Jersey home, she hid herself away, bought some cheap canvases and turned her focus to painting – and hasn’t stopped, and come five years later today, she has exhibited across the world. Recent bodies of work include an Edward Hopper-inspired series – which gets me to think about the connection between the solitude of 1930s America with today. But unlike Hopper, McKinney paints exclusively women, always inside, and resting in still, private moments – as she has said: “That’s what I really try to capture in this beautiful solitude … Some of the ladies are very tense in those moments with a cigarette, and then sometimes they’re asleep and beautiful. But those moments are theirs. --- THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: https://www.famm.com/en/ https://www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // https://www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037 Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic Music by Ben Wetherfield

The Great Women Artists