Danielle Alexander is a young Cape Town based artist and graduate of the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. She majored in Painting and Visual and Art History which is notable in some of the art historical references and characteristics seen in her oil paintings.

She specifically finds inspiration in Neoclassism and Baroque imagery. She uses images of linen found in her personal domestic spaces as her subject matter. Using the creases and folds of the drapery in place of the body to communicate emotions of tension, passivity, or drama. A metaphor to reveal and conceal broader concerns and questions around institutional critique within a Fine Arts context and its canons of established or recognizable symbolism – as well as more personal concerns, like vulnerability and agency with regards to her own personal identity and its complexity.

Danielle’s compositions always have a façade of composure but there is always an underlying current of tension, questioning and hopefulness. In addition to using oil paint, she often works with alternative media such as Crete stone, polyfilla and plaster to create textured paintings commenting on notions of the seen and unseen through the use of materials usually associated with hiding or fixing cracks or faults. Drawing on images of imagined landscapes and drapery her work further looks at ideas of memory being ingrained or attached to place but also acts as a way of trying to map out internal thoughts and notions of positionality.