Cynthia Daignault approaches painting as a long form act, treating it as a cinematic, durational medium. Interested in narrative and time-based work, she experiments with bringing those concepts and histories into painting, with memory, history and landscape being some of the ideas she addresses. Daignault looks for subject matter outside of her studio, exploring ways to imbue her images with meaning. For past projects, she has painted the sky every day for a year, the same view of trees for 40 days and nights, and in 2015, Daignault travelled around the entire circumference of America, stopping every 25 miles to paint the scene before her. Such endeavors require uncertainty and endurance, and in completed works, this translates to a sense of narrative and emotional weight.
Cynthia Daignault (b. 1978, Baltimore, MD) received a BA in Art and Art History from Stanford University. The first major monograph on her work, Light Atlas, was published in 2019. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2019 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, a 2011 Rema Hort Foundation Award, and a 2010 MacDowell Artist Fellowship. Her work has been featured in recent institutional exhibitions including The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970-2020 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL; Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; and Soft Water Hard Stone, the 2021 New Museum Triennial, NY. In 2026, Daignault will present a major solo institutional exhibition at ICA Boston, MA. Daignault's work is in numerous public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. She has presented solo exhibitions and projects at many major museums and galleries, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, MASS MoCA, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and White Columns. She lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.