Sophie Lourdes Knight: Everything Counts

In her solo exhibition, Everything Counts, Sophie Lourdes Knight reflects on the process of creating a painting and the ways in which a painting can take on a life of its own. Just as individuals are an accumulation of unique experiences, the existence of each painting is defined by an accumulation of conceptual and formal decisions. Says Knight, “Everything Counts as a title embodies a central concern of these recent works on canvas; that every influence, every gesture and every interest is important to the creation of each painting. Though influences may seem disparate and unrelated (to me), the reality is that each single thread that comes together, even if it is erased or painted over, is integral to the piece. I have found that each of these works has numerous “lives” before becoming its final self, each layer of paint providing new textures and transparencies that benefit the final image.”

Knight is visually drawn to the minutia of life, which, in her work, become heroic and essential. There is a simplicity to her paintings that belies their complex facture; each work is slowly and meticulously built up from layer upon layer of paint. Knight sets out to embellish life’s more prosaic moments in both a literal and a conceptual sense. The result is a body of work that is, in the broadest sense, narrative. Her individual paintings become snapshots from a greater story, each possessing traces from moments that came before.

Sophie Lourdes Knight is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily in painting and drawing. She received a BTEC in Art & Design from the Wimbledon College of Art, London, in 2011 and a BFA in Painting & Drawing from California College of the Arts in 2014. She currently lives and works in the South San Francisco Bay Area. Knight’s work has recently been shown in solo exhibitions at Steven Zevitas Gallery in Boston, MA and OGAARD in Oakland, CA as well as group exhibitions at the Royal Academy in London, the Wells Art Contemporary Award in Somerset, England and Traywick Contemporary in Berkeley, CA. This is her first solo exhibition with Zevitas Marcus.