Danny Moynihan

Danny Moynihan (b.1959, London UK)  is a curator, writer, film maker and painter. 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 ever-evolving landscape, serve as 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 the expanding consciousness towards realms unknown, culminate in the creation of landscapes that feel both familiar and in flux. He works with oil paint and sand to produce rocky and tangible textures characterised by a remarkable unity and coherence. The artistic vision is as original as it is dynamic, weaving together 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 of it all, most obviously to the caves, to Cosquer and Chauvet, but also to Morocco where Moynihan spends much time, 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.” 

Danny Moynihan has exhibited nationally and internationally, most notably Grob Gallery, London, UK (1992); Anne Faggionato, London UK (2001) and McGrath Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (1988, 89). More recently, his curatorial projects include Bacon in Tangier, Musée Yves Saint Laurent, Paris, France (forthcoming, 2025); Beach, Nino Meir Gallery, New York, NY (2023) and North by North East, Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY (2021). His book, Boogie Woogie (2001) cast a satirical eye over the New York art scene in the 90s. The film version directed by Duncan Ward (2009) starred Gillian Anderson, Alan Cumming, Heather Graham, Danny Huston, Christopher Lee, Joanna Lumley, Charlotte Rampling, Amanda Seyfried, Stellan Skarsgård and Jaime Winstone.  In 2012, he produced Me and Me Dad which was nominated at Cannes International Film Festival and Telluride International Film Festival.