Painter Danielle Orchard explored collaborative printmaking during an extended residency at Tamarind Institute in 2019. Her work advances the forms of twentieth-century modernism with the mood of twenty-first-century narratives. She purposefully complicates the figures of Picasso, Matisse, Bonnard, and Vuillard with her own autobiography and a decidedly contemporary perspective. Orchard maintains a consistent interest in the figure and what she recognizes as the “anxiety around intimacy” by pulling from moments in art history when the human figure has been used to indicate an “otherwise hidden psychological position.” Her figures occupy the space fully, as monumental forms, with evidence of a pensive mood or defiant attitude reflected in the symbolic devices of cigarettes, wine glasses, and sympathetic tulips that Orchard utilizes to suggest an emotive state. Her complex imagery locates a place in the middle, where art history turns back upon itself to reflect our contemporary cultural moment.

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Image: Danielle Orchard, Smile More