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Photography Carmen TROESSER
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Photography Carmen TROESSER
Lauren Knight was on the hunt for a King protea. Before leaving on a family vacation to the Hawaiian island of Kauai, she pulled aside her husband, Andrew, a business professor at Washington University, and told him she wanted to do some photography while on the island. That’s where the protea came in. Knight, who paints portraits of plants and flowers, her family, and other objects, was on a mission to find the giant flowering plant, a white bulb with pink petals that cup its side.
In Kauai, the couple and their three boys—Milo, 12; Oliver, 10; and Emil, 8—pulled over to take photos of cacti, checked farmers’ markets and flower shops for the flower, but the protea remained elusive…until Knight went grocery shopping. There, in the Safeway, were buckets upon buckets of the flower. “I ran in and just stopped,” Knight says. “It’s like a bucket of roses here.” The protea will make an appearance in a new Kauai series Knight is planning.
For Knight, the “stop the car” jolt of inspiration is a familiar one. Her father, who died when she was 12, was a photographer, and when Knight was a child, he frequently pulled the car over if he caught sight of light hitting the landscape in a particularly interesting way. But though her dad was a creative, art didn’t come to Knight until later—and it was by accident. A fall during ballet class left her with a broken ankle. Without a creative outlet, and restless at home, she picked up a paintbrush and “made some terrible-looking paintings,” she says. That was in December 2017. By December 2019, she’d shown a collection of works at Meshuggah Café on Delmar and sold nine of them.
From her University City home, kitten by her side, Knight paints what she loves, designs compositions, and photographs subjects on her iPhone. She then uses a grid to draw the photograph on canvas before painting. It’s technical work—she wants to get the proportions right—and she likes that she can zoom in to see all the different shades and shadows in a photograph.
Photography by Carmen Troesser
Her children make appearances in her paintings, and motherhood is also a theme. “There’s a chair that’s in a lot of my work,” she says. “That thread is supposed to represent the mother. We’re always kind of in the background, supporting whoever is there.”
Tropical life is a big source of inspiration, but other times it’s color that grabs her attention. While grocery shopping one day, she recalls, “I saw a red snapper that looked like it had been plucked directly from the ocean—and then I found this dragonfruit that complemented the fish.” The still life, rounded out with oranges and peonies, now hangs in the dining room. “Painting has changed the way I see the world,” Knight says.
This year, Knight turns 40. It’s a significant age, and to celebrate, she’s hoping to create an e-commerce site. She also longs to build a backyard greenhouse. That way, the tropical plants and flowers she’s so drawn to will be a bit closer to home.
