fnord

Gustave Moreau, 1826-1898

Cléopâtre, assise, demi nue, de face sur un trône très élevé, n/d, aquarelle et rehauts de gouache, 39.5x25 cm

While painting was one of Danielle Mckinney’s passions, she was a photographer by profession. Growing up, a camera was always her tool of choice, and she completed an MFA in photography at the Parsons School of Design in 2013. After graduating, she kept pursuing photography, contacting galleries and other establishments to publicize her art. She worked weddings. From the streets of New York or in parks, she’d photograph what she called “people in gestures,” because she was “fascinated by humanity and movement.”

Shut inside her New Jersey home during Covid-19, Mckinney (b 1982) hit a breaking point. She marched into the local Michaels arts and crafts store, bought some cheap canvases, turned her headphones on and hid away in her attic. And she couldn’t stop painting.

“I wasn’t thinking,” Mckinney said. “And that’s what the creative act does when you can take ‘you’ away.”

She came to a conclusion: Maybe, her lady just doesn’t want to go outside.

As a self-professed “extreme homebody,” who hardly leaves the house except to go to the studio, Mckinney can relate. In some ways, painting her lady inside is just what’s familiar to her.

Even as the idea of lockdown becomes a distant memory, her work still reads as a testament to rest and one’s own abode. As all her ladies are Black, that element of the work might feel especially revolutionary for other Black women.

Meet the Toucan Barbet (Semnornis ramphastinus)! This thick-billed bird inhabits cloud forests throughout parts of Colombia and Ecuador. It uses its bill to crush berries and squeeze nectar out of flowers. Both males and females have vibrant plumage; the main difference in appearance is that males have a black tuft by their necks.