In January 2020, Danny Fox was renting a house in the Hollywood Hills, selling paintings to Kanye West and Kim Kardashian while living near Skid Row. The pandemic changed his plans. A friend’s warning about the severity of the situation sent him back to Cornwall, to a crumbling stone cottage he’d bought in 2017 but rarely used.
Fox sits on the porch of that cottage, a dog named Pepsi at his feet. The property lies at the end of a winding track, surrounded by fields with mobile homes and caravans. It differs greatly from the Sunset Strip, though he has no regrets about leaving. “I didn’t know the place,” he says of Los Angeles. “I couldn’t tell you what anything there was worth. But I know here.”
The artist grew up in St Ives, a few doors down from where the painter Alfred Wallis once lived. At 17, he left for London in search of opportunity. The following decade was restless: he worked as a laborer, pot washer, decorator, and barman, painting at night out of habit. Stints in Hastings and Cardiff followed before he returned to London, where a chance meeting in Spitalfields Market altered his path.
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An antique dealer named Adam offered him a job. For a year, Fox barely painted. Instead, he traveled the country, searching vintage fairs and car-boot sales. “I was learning how to tell stories about objects so I could sell them,” he explains. The work influenced his art, changing how he approached painting—and his life. It also deepened his interest in antiques, salvage, and folk art, which now fill his home.
The cottage reflects his past. Works by Henry Taylor, Eddie Martinez, and Wes Lang share space with homemade sculptures and oddities. A rare painting by Wallis holds a central place. The rooms feel less like a museum and more like an active sketchbook, unpolished and full of energy.
When Fox moved back to Cornwall in 2020, he hired old friends to renovate the cottage using reclaimed materials. The studio, designed with architect Jacob Down, stands as the heart of the project. Sunlight pours through high ceilings onto a floor made of salvaged timber. Canvases lean against walls covered in his handwritten notes. It serves as a workspace, not a display.
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His life has followed unexpected turns—London, Los Angeles, then Cornwall again. Yet the cottage feels like a natural endpoint, where his art and collecting habits merge. The items he’s gathered over the years aren’t just decorations; they represent pieces of his own story.
That tendency to gather and repurpose appears in everything he does. The renovation itself was assembled from scrapyards and salvage yards across the UK. The outcome isn’t sleek. It’s rough, practical, and deeply tied to his identity.
For Fox, the cottage is more than a home. It functions as a studio, a gallery, and a storage place for memories. After years of movement, he has returned to his roots—but this time, he has created something distinctly his own.
