Chad Knight is not only an amazing and talented professional skater, but also has taken the time to learn and understand the business behind the scenes.With his knowledge of growing up in the industry and his love of health and wellness, he is a true motivator for up and coming skaters and a valued asset as a sponsor.
Name: Chad Knight
Age: 39
Birthday: November 8th 1976
College: Mira Costa Community College (6 years)
Favorite Color: Black
Favorite Book: Ender’s Game
Favorite Movie: American Beauty
Favorite Food: Iced Coffee
Favorite Quote: It’s a great thing when you realize you still have the ability to surprise yourself -Lester Burnham.
Chad Knight started his 365 challenge of creating a new piece of digital art every day as a simple exercise that would help him improve his craft. Instead, “it quickly transformed into a visual personal journal,” he tells The Creators Project. The works exist in their own world, one filled with beautiful and frightening impossibilities like giant deconstructed skulls and an enormous elephant man who looks like an all-powerful ancient god. There are none of the mundanities that we typically associate with a journal, no petty peeves or slice-of-life imagery. Instead, Knight says his visual journal is “so heavily coded that I can share it with the world.” Through this lens, taking in the works become a fascinating psychological experiment.
Artist Interview:
Why are you an artist, and when did you first become one? I think I became an artist at conception. It is more who I am as a person that what I do. However, the reason I make art is because I have a very overactive, noisy mind. Creating art is one of the few things that allows me to totally present. I skateboarded professionally for 16 years. During that time, it served as my creative outlet. Now that I do not have the opportunity to do it as often, combined with being less enthusiastic about broken bones, my 3D explorations have become my new outlet.
Can we talk a bit about your process at the beginning of a project? How do you conceive of it? How do you build it in your mind before you start? My mind is always going and I have learned to just ignore most of it’s nonsense. However, I keep a small amount of my attention focused on it and notice when it has something interesting to say. Sometimes these ideas are inventions, solutions to an ongoing problem and sometimes they are an idea or a vague image that I use as inspiration for a project. Rarely will I have an entire piece preconceived. I like to sit down with a subject in mind, and see what happens.
What’s the best advice anyone gave you? “You are always capable of more than you think” -Dad
Do you suffer for your art? No way. That is the one time my mind gets to have unsupervised fun.
How would you define yourself as an artist? I wouldn’t
What inspires you to work? I enjoy the process and the result. Most of the time I will get in a zone and things just start falling into place. I like watching how my projects unfold. The desire to constantly improve is also a major motivating factor.
You seem to use a lot of symbols in your work. Do your works tell stories or are they simply decorative elements of the project? Everything on my work represents something or someone. My art is very much like an encrypted journal that I can share publicly.
What famous artists have influenced you, and how? I have always been been influenced by the Renaissance and Baroque artists. More specifically, Claudio Coello, Peter Paul Rubens, Giovanni Lanfranco, Orazio Gentileschi, Caravaggio, to name a few.Their work is incredibly powerful. The lighting, craftsmanship and fluidity is mesmerizing. There are also digital artists, such as Mike Winkleman (Beeple), Archan Nair, Eric Kalsbeek (Kalsloos), Fvckrender, Joe Pascale and ThunderKat that I very much admire.
What other interests do you have outside of art? Skateboarding, painting, inventing, learning
You seem to be very aware of the history of works. Where do you see films, photo exhibitions, art performances today? I work in the design department for Van’s Shoes. Everyday is an exhibition. But I certainly attempt to view as much art as I can. Being so close to LA, there is no shortage of opportunity to see great stuff.
How would your life change if you were no longer allowed to create art? If I could not create I believe I would become very stagnant and restless. It would certainly feel like a part of me had been amputated.
What are your next projects? Create something new everyday and see where this rabbit hole takes me.
H/T : www.linkedin.com/in/chadknight
H/T : https://imgur.com