Danny Markey

Danny Markey (b. 1965, Falmouth, Cornwall) is a British painter known for atmospheric paintings of everyday places: suburban roads, housing estates, petrol stations, football pitches, cars, pylons, interiors and landscapes. Often concentrating on overlooked or apparently ordinary subjects, his work is distinguished by a strong sense of place, weather and changing light, particularly at dusk and after dark.

Markey studied at Falmouth School of Art from 1983 to 1984 and at Camberwell School of Art, London, from 1984 to 1987, where he was awarded the Richard Chamberlain Memorial Prize. While still a student he won first prize at the South Bank Picture Show in 1986. He first exhibited with The Redfern Gallery in 1992 and has held regular solo exhibitions with the gallery since.

Markey frequently paints directly from observation, often working outdoors in oil or watercolour. Some works are completed almost entirely on the spot, while others develop through a combination of direct observation, memory and subsequent work in the studio.

Travel has also provided an important source of imagery. Markey visited the United States in the early 1990s and again worked in California in 2004, while a visit to Tokyo in 1990 led to a group of paintings of streets, apartments, signs and illuminated urban spaces. His subjects nevertheless remain deliberately unspectacular: roadsides, waste ground, parked vehicles, houses, pylons and recreational spaces recur throughout his work.

Night has been a particularly sustained subject. From early paintings of chip shops, streets and illuminated windows to later views of Californian highways and housing estates, Markey has repeatedly explored the way artificial light transforms familiar surroundings. His 2016 Redfern exhibition Nocturnes surveyed three decades of these night paintings and works on paper. Reviewing the exhibition in the Financial Times, Jackie Wullschlager described them as “nocturnes that are both dystopian mysteries and particular, evocative descriptions of time and milieus”.

Markey’s work has been widely selected for open and survey exhibitions. He was a prize-winner in The London Group Open Exhibition in 1993, has been regularly included in the Discerning Eye, and won Second Prize in the RWS/Sunday Times Watercolour Competition in 2009. He was runner-up in the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize in both 2013 and 2015, and his work was included in Towards Night at Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, in 2016. A retrospective was held at the Old Jail Art Center, Albany, Texas, in 1997. He was elected a Royal West of England Academician in 2001 and teaches at the Royal Drawing School.

His work is held in public collections including the British Museum, the Royal West of England Academy, Falmouth Art Gallery and the Old Jail Art Center, Albany, Texas.

Danny Markey is represented by The Redfern Gallery.