From Instagram to art world darling: The meteoric rise of Danielle Mckinney

The Alabama-born artist’s career has been transformed by social media, turning a side project into a full-fledged painting career.

Danielle Mckinney’s ladies are in a permanent state of relaxation. They lounge alone on couches or in bed. They sleep. Some are playful — toying with a butterfly or eying a praying mantis. Others are naked and seemingly unaware of the viewer, cigarettes in hand and gazes soft. The 43-year-old artist has been painting these women her whole life, she said. As a little girl, she painted little girls, too, but her subjects have aged as she has. In conversation, Mckinney refers to them singularly as her “lady,” and, taken together, the moody portraits reflect intimate moments of solitude and repose. For years, however, these works were private endeavors by an artist who formally trained as a photographer and only painted on the side. They were never meant to see the world. Now, a little over four years after first publicly posting her portraits on social media, Mckinney has become one of the art world’s buzziest painters. Prints of her work sell for thousands of dollars; late last year, she even did a collaboration with Dior. At a new exhibition, opening at the TEFAF Maastricht art fair in the Netherlands next month, the Alabama-born artist will debut nine works inspired by American realist Edward Hopper. The success of recent years initially brought panic, she said. Now, she’s learned to get out of her own head.