In late 19th-century London, the famed writer and ostentatious dandy Oscar Wilde initiated a trend that, as trends often do, flourished into a life of its own. Wilde wore a green carnation—the typically pink petals were dyed with arsenic—to the theater, prompting questions about what the oddly colored boutonniere symbolized. This was the height of floriology in Victorian England, when various blooms were utilized to convey covert meanings, and the green carnation was an addition to this practice.
As Tara Isabella Burton writes, Wilde’s sartorial choice ultimately led to his downfall, after a novel called The Green Carnation, based on one of his relationships with another man, was used as evidence in his trial for “gross indecency.” (It should be noted that Wilde didn’t write this novel.) The flower quickly implanted itself in the collective psyche as a symbol of queer sexuality.
A new body of work by Kris Knight draws on this phenomenon. Through oil pastels, the Canadian artist renders intimate portraits alongside floral still lifes. These pairings emerge from Knight’s enduring interest in Victorian culture and its social sensibilities. He describes himself as a “huge history nerd” and focused earlier series on 19th-century pandemics and the notion that the sea could cure one’s ails.
“The Victorian era was very repressed and proper; the fad of floriography was a way that people, especially young people, could express secret desires and sentiments by selecting flowers to give each other,” he says, noting that most blooms had double meanings. “Although queer people were still very much in the shadows, and still illegal, this period of time made some progress with regarding gay people as human beings. That’s probably where my nerdy fascination with Victorian times stems from—the push and pull of being repressed and poetically romantic.”
When he begins a portrait, Knight typically invites friends and fellow creatives to his studio for a conversation, and rather than paint through long sittings, the artist refers to photos, preliminary sketches, and these dialogues to inform his works. He often asks about his subjects’ childhoods and their experiences of coming out. “It’s a privilege to have access to their softness,” he adds.
In Green Carnation, Knight even extends his typical network to portray his first boyfriend, James, who died young, alongside large hibiscus flowers in blue. These fleeting blooms typically close at night and reflect the artist’s interest in depicting a personality trait or characteristic through the metaphor of florals.
Knight’s own childhood in rural Canada was a time of freedom and exploration. He grew up traversing the forests surrounding his grandparents’ farm and spent his days studying flowers and sometimes braiding their stems. “I never felt alone in nature, and a lot of my work is about my own storytelling. When I look back at my work, I can tell exactly what happened, what was going on in my life at that time,” he shares.
This autobiographical turn also emerges through the soft color palette and bits of blue that accentuate features and play with light and shadow. Blue, for Knight, is best suited to capture the sort of melancholic joy he feels and to translate his trepidations and desire for solitude onto the canvas:
Color is so symbolic when it comes to mood and desire. That’s where the title of this suite of paintings comes from, when Oscar Wilde instructed his gay male friends to wear the green flower on their lapels to the opening night of his play, as a way to secretly hint at their sexuality. As gossip amongst queer men prevailed, this witty act of mocking the “unnaturalness” of homosexuality by wearing a dyed green carnation became a subtle queer code that you were a man who desired other men.
Green Carnation is on view from January 29 to February 28 at GAVLAK in West Palm Beach. Find more from Knight on Instagram.
