Mckinney is a trained photographer who turned to painting full time during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than working with a live model, she relies heavily on combining elements from static imagery, for example, a woman’s pose from one photo with the setting from another. Her process evokes Hendricks, who transformed his own street-style-esque photography into eye-catching portraits. Experiencing Hendricks’s work as a grad student was hugely formative, says McKinney: ‘With Barkley’s portraits, you weren’t just looking at a person – it was like he was bringing you into a moment.’ More recently, Mckinney has discovered the late Baltimore-based photographer Steven Cuffie, known for his intimate images of Black women during the 1970s.
Mckinney and Nairobi-born artist Wangari Mathenge, 51, both consider Henri Matisse deeply influential on their practices. Because she was not trained as a painter, Mckinney is guided by the legendary French artist’s philosophy of ‘painting what you feel in your spirit,’ as she describes. Mathenge, who splits her time between Nairobi and Chicago, is inspired by his patterning and layered interiors. ‘When I’m stuck, I look at Matisse, and I feel free,’ says the artist, who, like Mckinney, primarily situates her figures in domestic settings.
