Danielle Baron Atkins

Danielle Baron Atkins is an American Israeli painter and sculptor working in Brooklyn and Woodstock, NY. Her work examines the female form as well as the many roles of women in our contemporary society. She abstracts, dissects, and exaggerates the female form utilizing discarded items from her household and most recently Israeli made products. 

The women she depicts sit and stand in suggestive poses, often wearing stilettos. These anonymous figures exude sexuality, fertility, and motherhood. She utilizes a juxtaposition of delicate, stereotypically “feminine” colors with repetitive, aggressive, graffiti-like markings. Danielle repurposes remnants of her children’s discarded belongings such as broken headphones (used during school lockdowns), worn out crocks and skateboarding sneakers, underwear bands that have lost their elasticity, socks and mittens that have abandoned their partner, candy wrappers, torn vintage comic books found under her children’s beds, old cookbooks, pill bottle tops, cardboard packages, and junk mail to accentuate her underlying themes. 

Motherhood has deeply affected her art making process. Danielle’s sharp observations of the roles and struggles of women create an ever-evolving definition of womanhood. 

Artistic discipline:

Painting, collage and sculpture 

Project vision: 

After October 7th, 2024, I was not sure how to keep making art. Everything had changed. I was not the same person I was on October 6th.  I decided that I would make my female forms from Israeli products in honor of my Israeli heritage.  I traveled to Israel to see my family, volunteer, and collect everything I could get my hands on.  I dug through recycling in the back of the German Colony, went to grocery stores, and asked for fruit boxes and kept all of the wrappers from everything we used – granola bars, soda tops, maps, napkins, salt, pepper and sugar packets.  Anything that had Hebrew writing I stored in my backpack. I am in the process of creating female forms from these Israeli objects. 

 I’m very interested in delving into Jewish texts to find wisdom, inspiration and purpose all through the lens of CHANGE.  I would like to continue investigating the concept of CHANGE by asking myself the following questions as I make art: How has my relationship with my children changed as they are growing older and more independent? How has my relationship with my family changed as we have all experienced the aftermath of October 7th?  How has my relationship with Judaism changed in the past year? How has my interaction with found objects changed this year? What does it mean to be a proud Israeli when so many people don’t think Israel should exist? How does the meaning of objects change when they are no longer used for their original purpose? How do we change to make change? 

I would like to make a series of large scale (approximately 6’x4’) female forms using discarded objects from Israel intertwined with leftover objects from my home and Hebrew prayers to honor those who were killed and brutalized this past year. The past four months I have been exploring the use of clay to create abstracted heads. I would like to see how to merge these two ideas.   

I require large canvases, a staple gun, glue and the objects that I have amassed. I am always looking for more boxes and wrappers from Israel. I am currently spending about six hours a week out of my painting studio working in a clay studio where they provide the clay, glaze, and firing.   

Daniellebaronatkins.com