It’s January 2020, and Danny Fox is renting a house in the Hollywood Hills, having spent the past few years selling his paintings to the likes of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, while living and working amid the glamour and grime of Skid Row. Life is good for the self-taught Cornish artist, but talk of a pandemic that could shut down the entire world is gathering momentum. ‘This thing is real,’ a friend tells Fox over the phone. ‘It’s either stay where you are or get stuck somewhere else.’
‘So I came home,’ Fox tells me, six years later, as we sit on his porch in the blazing afternoon sun, during Britain’s summer of endless heatwaves. Home is an old stone cottage hidden at the end of a winding track in the farthest reaches of west Cornwall. He had purchased the property, surrounded by fields populated with mobile homes and caravans, in 2017, following a year of shows that had completely altered his life. Initially, he was in no rush to return.
I ask him what changed, and why he decided to abandon his seemingly idyllic life in California for the remote isolation of the wild West Country: why buy a crumbling cottage in the middle of nowhere instead of a mansion on Sunset Strip? ‘I didn’t know the place,’ he says, ‘even though I’d been there a few years. I couldn’t tell you what anything there was worth.’ He pauses to pet his dog, Pepsi. ‘But I knew this. I know here.’
Fox was raised in nearby St Ives, the tiny fishing village where his family home was a few doors down from where celebrated naive artist Alfred Wallis once lived. Having made art from an early age, at 17 Fox left home for London in search of glory. There began a nomadic period in which he moved between jobs – labourer, pot washer, decorator, barman – while still painting through the nights, a habit he keeps to this day. London was followed by stints in Hastings and Cardiff, before he eventually returned to the capital.
It was in Spitalfields Market around 2009, in his early twenties, that a chance encounter with an antique dealer named Adam set him on a new path. After accepting his offer of a job, Fox spent his days attending vintage furniture fairs and car-boot sales around the country. ‘There was a period, for about a year or so, where I barely painted or made any art at all. It was probably the least I had ever done it, but it was the best thing for me. Because I was learning. I was spending all this time in the back of Ad’s van, or on a market stall, surrounded by weird, ancient objects, and learning how to tell stories about them so that I could sell them.’
The experience changed Fox’s approach to painting, which subsequently led to success. But it also triggered a lasting love of antiques, architectural salvage and folk art. Throughout the house, salvaged pieces and vernacular craftsmanship reveal an artist whose life has been shaped as much by collecting and scavenging as by painting. Works by Henry Taylor, Eddie Martinez and Wes Lang hang among home-made sculptures and curious finds, while a rare work by Wallis provides a fitting anchor.
Following his return at the start of the pandemic, Fox spent the ensuing years employing old friends to renovate the cottage using reclaimed materials sourced from scrapyards and salvage spots across the UK. The centrepiece is the extraordinary studio he designed with architect Jacob Down: part workshop, part cathedral. Light pours through its high ceilings on to a vast floor of reclaimed timber boards, while huge canvases lean against walls covered with Fox’s scrawled thoughts and notes.
Today, the house feels like a natural extension of Fox’s art; a striking self-portrait that hints at the life he has lived till now. Nothing feels overly considered or precious; it is a working home, shaped by the same curiosity, instinct and humour that runs through his paintings. After years spent moving between places, Fox has ended up back where he started, surrounded by the collections, people, landscapes and myths that have long informed his work.
‘Danny Fox: Fata Morgana’, runs 9 September to 7 October 2026 at Alexander Berggruen, New York. Visit alexanderberggruen.com
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