Secrets Are Things We Grow

Painter Kris Knight creates symbolic portraits of young men, often surrounding his subjects in feminine visual rhetoric like soft, pastel colored textiles and floral imagery. Knight’s subjects often have a fragile appearance, and even look fearful.

Throwing Shadows

I really like the delicate, painterly style in which Kris renders his subjects. Smooth, half-blended brush strokes and lingering color gradients lend each work a dreamlike quality, as if the subjects are caught in sleep or refusing to wake up. It seems fitting, considering the artist’s penchant for addressing themes like the fear of letting go of childhood, and male emotions and sensitivity. Aesthetically, many of Knight’s paintings are expressed in cool tones, like the illustrations of Carolina Seth.

Knight’s artworks take a particularly intimate view of their subjects, casting the male figures in a light of solitude, even loneliness. In some works, this sense is so strong that the viewer gets the impression that they are seeing something that they shouldn’t, or that would otherwise be hidden.

Distraction Patterns, oil on canvas