The art in Good Grief
An interview with Kris Knight on painting for Dan Levy's film
I’ll be honest: I watched Good Grief, Dan Levy’s first foray into directing, because of Kris Knight’s paintings. I get a thrill watching movies to see what a character has hung on their walls, and even more so when it’s an artist I know.
Paintings play a large role in Good Grief. Two of the most moving monologues in the movie are accompanied by shots of paintings. After the funeral, the next scene is a straight-on shot of a sketch. The viewer transfers all the pent-up emotion from the eulogy onto the artwork; it takes on a new meaning of melancholy and longing. Not many artists could pull off creating artwork that fulfills this purpose, but Kris Knight can.
I chatted with Knight via email about what it was like to create paintings for film; you can read our conversation below.
About Kris Knight:
Kris Knight centers his art on representation, queerness, and intimacy, exploring diverse forms of masculinity. His work celebrates tenderness and vulnerability. Through romantic paintings and portraits, Knight crafts emotional realms that serve as portals to his past and present. Rooted in personal memory, his narratives delicately balance the impact of halcyon queer moments without sensationalism. Knight's pastel and tonal oil paintings convey shifting moods, themes, and experiences, creating a quiet, elegant world marked by sensitivity and subtle melancholy.
Kris Knight has an upcoming solo exhibition at Spinello Projects, Miami, in February 2024.
How did the collaboration between you and Dan Levy start?
Dan called me out of the blue in July of 2022 – we had never met before, but I knew he was a collector of my work. He told me that he had written a script that was an exploration of grief, but mostly that it would be a love story about the importance of friendship (adult friendship!). He told me about the main character Marc (who Dan plays), a gay man in his late 30s whose life is derailed by the loss of his husband, Oliver. Marc is an artist who gave up his painting practice years ago after losing his mother and lives contently as an illustrator collaborating with but also very much in the shadow of his magnetic husband – an extremely successful YA author.
Dan spoke of how he envisioned his first film and the importance that Marc’s artwork be sincere. I thought about how most films blow the role of the artist, how the art is often an afterthought or mere set prop and how many movies I’ve watched with embarrassment that would have been so much better if the producers had just hired a consultant from the art world or a practicing artist. I thought Dan was calling to get my opinion or, better yet, hire me as a consultant on his film, but at the end of our phone call, he asked me if I would collaborate with him and create paintings for the film, a somewhat ghost painter for his character Marc.
Throughout the film, there are lots of ideas on the use of art as a way to process grief. I'd love to hear your thoughts about the relationship between painting and grief.
I’ve always seen my painting practice as both an exercise and an exorcism - a therapeutic vehicle to process daily life. Dan told me about the personal grief that inspired him to write the film during the pandemic. I also had recently lost my grandfather, who was my role model in so many ways. The pandemic was such a fucked up time for so many people because the ritual of closure when it comes to dealing with death was collectively taken away. I couldn’t visit my grandfather in the hospital, couldn’t say goodbye when he was dying, or hold a funeral when he passed. I am very fortunate that I get to paint every day towards my next show, but my paintings at the time felt too bleak, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted them to exist outside of my studio. When Dan approached me to paint for his film about grief, I saw it as a serendipitous detour from real life, but in hindsight, I was using this commission as a vehicle to metabolize my own grief.
What did the process of creating the paintings for the film look like? How was it similar or dissimilar to your typical process?
The themes in my work are pretty autobiographical, even though I paint other people. As much as I try to celebrate my sitters (mostly queer creatives), there’s often a subtle sense of melancholy that comes through in the work that I cannot shake. I ask a lot of questions when someone sits for me to try to lighten the starkness of the situation, but it’s often something vulnerable that my sitters tell me that lingers in my mind for hours when I paint them. The process for painting for the film was different because it was a commission at the end of the day, but I had a script to paint from, so I knew the story of each character long before I knew what they would look like. What was dissimilar to my typical process was the manic pace. I had a few months to plan closely with Production Designer Alice Normington and make studies during pre-production, but once the casting was complete, I really only had a couple of months to make a show’s worth of work in Toronto before it had to ship to London.
I noticed you had a cameo in the last scene of the film! What was shooting like?
I joke that I spent my entire 20s working in art galleries in Toronto to prepare for my non-speaking, two-second, uncredited role as “gallery attendant”. My cameo came by accident because I was on set in London to assist the art department in setting up Marc’s art studio and the art gallery in the final scene. I was making sure things looked legit to my knowledge and noticed there was nobody cast as gallery staff so I offered to be behind the gallery desk. Passing out exhibition statements, pricelists and glasses of white wine during exhibition openings was what I did the first Thursday night of each month for years when I was a gallery assistant, so it wasn’t that much of a stretch.
Wow. The paintings in the art gallery scene were made by him? They're sooo beautiful.
Amazing! Can't wait to see the film :)