Danny Moynihan

Danny Moynihan (b.1959, London UK)  is a writer, painter, and curator. Though he graduated from the Slade School of Art and once found himself closely aligned with the Young British Artists (YBAs), in 2003, Moynihan took a hiatus from exhibiting his work. It wasn't until his relocation to New York City in 2016 that he embarked on a new series of cave paintings. These works, exploring the interplay between memory and the ever-evolving landscape, are a profound inspiration for his current oeuvre, characterized by futuristic, erotic, and energetic themes.

Moynihan’s fascination with humanity's earliest musings and visual representations of the world, coupled with his expanding consciousness towards realms unknown, culminates in creating landscapes that feel familiar and in flux. He works with oil paint and sand to produce rocky, tangible textures with remarkable unity and coherence. The artistic vision is as original as it is dynamic, weaving strands of mysticism and mythology to cross boundaries and evoke a sense of wonder and intrigue in viewers.

Adrian Dannatt writes: “Moynihan knows how to paint, he has been doing it for almost fifty years, and knows his art history. These paintings go back to the beginning, most obviously to the caves, Cosquer and Chauvet, and Morocco, where Moynihan spends much time and where the earliest human remains have been discovered. These are very much ‘cave paintings’ themselves, as French as North African, concluding a line of landscape in art from Lascaux through the Arcadian ideals of Poussin to the muddy realism of Courbet, a devolution, a ‘nostalgie de la boue’, returning to our primal darkness.” 

Moynihan has exhibited nationally and internationally, most notably Grob Gallery, London (1992); Anne Faggionato, London (2001) and McGrath Gallery, Los Angeles (1988, 89). His forthcoming solo exhibition, In Praise of Limestone, will be on view at Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, NY, in October 2024. Recent curatorial projects include Bacon in Tangier, Musée Yves Saint Laurent, Paris, France (forthcoming, 2025); Lynsey Adarrio, war photographer, Lyes and King, New York, NY (2024), Beach, Nino Meir Gallery, New York, NY (2023) and North by North East and Naturalia, Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY (2021). 

In addition to his visual art, Moynihan is also an accomplished writer and filmmaker. He authored the book Boogie-Woogie in 2001 and adapted it into a screenplay for a film released in 2010. His 2012 production, Me and Me Dad, was nominated for awards at Cannes International Film Festival and the Telluride International Film Festival.