Danielle Orchard

A Day On the Green

- Sasha Bogojev

The works of Danielle Orchard, at galleries and art fairs, strike very classic poses amid much of the surrounding contemporary work. Dominated by female figures, Orchard’s images conjure Picasso’s muses emerging from a machine to experience life in the twenty-first century. Content with their bodies and being, the women lounge around, sharing a bottle of wine, having a cigarette, reading a book or enjoying intimate time to be themselves.

Masterfully manipulating thick layers of paint and unexpected tones, her images successfully combine the long-established painting traditions with the carefree ambience of modern-day life.

Unique color choices are used to create haunting, mid-afternoon light and perspective effect through bold brush strokes and strategic painterly gestures. The results are atmospheric images that evoke languid lethargy and the buzz of cicadas in the background. Orchard’s works admit human foibles and critiques in cubist packages of life and leisure.

Sasha Bogojev: I’m going to start off with an odd question—what’s with the tennis references in your work?

Danielle Orchard: What’s with tennis… that’s a good question. These images entered my work around the time Serena Williams was in the news for refusing to wear an “appropriate” outfit during a tournament. She was rebelling against male policing of the female body, and it was really beautiful to watch. I became interested, after that, in the history of women’s tennis uniforms. They have always been contingent on the broader public’s relationship to female sexuality. It has little to do with the female body in motion, but 100 percent about censorship and what men deem acceptable. At one point, uniforms were ankle length; then in the 1970’s, they get really short. So it’s kind of all over the place.