Danielle Roberts. Photo: Anushka Bohra | @ab.frames, Courtesy Fredericks & Freiser Archives.

Danielle Roberts (b. 1991, Stockton, CA; raised in Gabriola Island, British Columbia; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.) She received an M.F.A. from Hunter College in 2021. Recent solo exhibitions include "Evening All Day" (2023) at Fredericks & Freiser, New York and "Afterglow" (2022) at Friends Indeed, San Francisco. Group exhibitions include "What Now?" (2022) at PM/AM, London; "Women of Now: Dialogues of Memory, Place and Identity" (2022) at Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX, and "Towards a More Beautiful Oblivion" (2021) at Fredericks & Freiser, NY.  Danielle is represented by Fredericks & Freiser in New York, and Friends Indeed in San Francisco.

Drawing from personal experience Danielle Roberts' paintings are grounded with an uncanny sense of place. Through the collision of light and shadow she creates a world where light is simultaneously magical and toxic; against a darkness that is both soothing and foreboding. The spaces in her paintings radiate with dark luminescence. Roberts does not shy away from discomfort and awkwardness in her worlds. She hones in on the pathos of her own experiences and those of her peers which are at once individual, unique to each of Roberts’ figures, and universal, instantly recognizable to audiences. The artist does not retreat into her painted worlds as an escape from the overwhelming anxiety and instability coursing through contemporary society; instead, she pushes right up against them, opening those spaces onto her audiences. There is an insistence on life and desire, even if those desires are complicated. The people of her scenes - withdrawn and ambivalent - wade through the mess, surviving on their own terms.

Danielle Roberts, Hidden in Plain Sight (The Reading), 2022, Acrylic on canvas, 54 x 60 inches. Courtesy Fredericks & Freiser, New York.

Danielle Roberts, The sky weighs heavy through the night, 2023, Acrylic on canvas, 76 x 96 inches.Courtesy Fredericks & Freiser, New York.

Danielle Roberts, Adrift, 2022, Acrylic on canvas, 56 x 66 inches. Courtesy Fredericks & Freiser, New York.