Kris Knight paints a softer vision of masculinity with his quietly subversive art

Last year, Kris Knight spent his 37th birthday at the chateau where the prolific French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau died almost three centuries ago when he himself was 37. Some people might be Beyoncé stans or Lady Gaga stans, but Knight is firmly in camp Watteau.

"It was a coincidence, but how groupie is that?" says Knight.

Knight was in France for an artist residency with Maison d'Art Bernard Anthonioz, during which he participated in an exhibition of artists influenced by Watteau — a revolutionary painter who explored the theatre and performance (amongst various other interests) in his work. After meeting Knight, it seems just right that he would spend his birthday in such a contemplative manner. Each art piece quietly reveals a story, offering a transitory visit into the life of another — hinting at sadness, sensuality, triumph or loss, sometimes all at once.

Celebrated both in the art and fashion world, his paintings over the last decade have been primarily of men, illustrating a softness and dreaminess that we rarely get to see attributed to the masculine. "I see gender, sexuality and desire on a spectrum," says Knight, who grew up in the farmlands of South Western Ontario before moving to Toronto to study art. "I am making images in the hope that I am making more space for people for whom gender doesn't have to limit their hopes and desires."

His committed discipline to his craft (he paints daily, rain or shine) has created artworks that have caught the interest of galleries, art critics, fans, dealers — and fashion titans, bringing on collaborations with Christian Lacroix and Gucci's creative director Frida Giannini. For Gucci, he created a unique floral pattern in 2015 that referenced flora from ancient Pagan Rome — plants that were used by women to command power over men through healing, seduction or poisoning. For Knight, the plants represent the heroines and the underdogs — a "witches' garden." On the surface, he says, the pattern is sweet, soft and sensual, but underneath, it's dark and enchanting.

The close proximity to nature while growing up in the country has influenced Knight's work and palette ("Going to the forest was a normal thing," he says), but being young and gay in small, insular countryside communities also had an impact on his work. "I know it's different now, hopefully, for young gay kids, but back then it wasn't easy," he says. "Like many gay kids who grow up in rural areas and small towns, I wanted to flee as quick as I could."

That fleeing brought him to study art at OCAD. As he grew more comfortable in his own skin, he says that he started to paint his own experiences and the experiences of other queer people. Though he is a figurative painter, he is not interested in a photorealistic depiction of his subjects — instead, he creates faces and images that are inspired by his models and his own imagination.

"A lot of the people who sit for me are queer," he says. "I started painting them and I didn't see it as a political statement, but I saw it as a freedom. I wanted to create images that I wish I saw growing up."

If there is a political stance in his work, Knight says it's how his art is positioned within masculinity. "It bothers me when men tell me that my work is 'too pretty' or too 'soft' or 'feminine' as a way of degrading the work — and it bothers me even more when I'm told this by hypermasculine gay men," he says. "I paint men in a way that blurs gender, and I don't like it when people hang their misogyny or their own internalized homophobia on the work."

I wanted to create images that I wish I saw growing up.- Kris Knight, painter

Knight says he's always been impressed with those who feel comfortable commanding a stage. He used to paint men with that performer's confidence, but realized he was more interested in teasing out what happens outside the spotlight. "Many of my paintings focus on the performer without an audience or the failed performer, and how they act when they don't have a spotlight to shine in," he says. "I did a lot of paintings of comedy, and the Italian comedy, but also its failures."

Though he calls himself a shy introvert, Knight also possesses a quality that puts those in his company at ease. Sitting sessions become confessional spaces, and brush and paint work to reveal the complexities of private lives.

Knight is putting these skills to work again as he starts his next collection for a solo exhibition in March 2019 at Galerie Alain Gutharc in Paris. "I'll be showing a brand new series of paintings that shifts direction from the theatrical to the domestic," he says. For him, that shift is partially about a desire to nurture self-care in a world — and news cycle — where he feels there's so much noise and chaos. "The theme will be more about looking inwards, this idea of memory and being on holiday and vacation," he says. "It's about trying to remember life without such anger; it's hard to go on Twitter without wanting to slap your laptop down."

Ever the observant artist, Knight — like his favourite painter, Watteau — says he has often been drawn to paint the character of the Harlequin. "Watteau's Pierrot/Gilles is one of my favourite paintings of all time, and I often pose my characters in the same frontal stance as he did with this composition," he says of the seminal work. Pierrot is Watteau's masterpiece, an enigmatic and dreamy depiction of the sad clown, thought by some to be a self-portrait.

The Harlequin is the comedian whose job is to entertain us, Knight says. But he also gets away with telling uncomfortable truths. "For a long time, the Harlequin has been a metaphor for artists, who often see their own ambivalent role in society similar to that of the clown," he says.

Keeping one foot in the spotlight and one foot firmly out of it, Knight is well positioned to continue to captivate and provoke thought, offering sharp observations in his dreamy, evocative works.