Interview published in Issue 6, 2022

Dylan Solomon Kraus

The old world neared its end. The pleasure garden of youthful humanity withered away -- up into more open, more desolate regions, forsaking their childhood, struggled the growing peoples. The gods vanished with their retinue -- Nature stood alone and lifeless. Dry number and rigid measure bound her with iron chains. Into dust and air the priceless blossoms of life fell away into words obscure. Gone was wonder working faith, with its all-transforming all-uniting angel twin, the imagination. A cold north wind blew unkindly over the torpid plain, and the wonderland first froze, then evaporated into ether. Heaven’s distances filled up with glowing worlds. Into the deeper sanctuary, into the more exalted region of the mind, the soul of the world retired with all her powers, there to rule until the dawn should break of universal glory.

—Novalis, excerpt from Hymns to the Night, 1797-1800

Much like the excerpt from one of his longstanding inspirations, Novalis’ romantic work Hymns to the Night, Dylan Solomon Kraus’ paintings aim to reinstate the entirety of the human experience, the entirety of the universe. Looking at his work the imagination is immediately activated; a boat signifies a vessel, navigating through the vast waters of being alive. The moon shines reiterating our existence in the cosmos. Birds appear as sentient reminders. Pendulums swing with the constant ticking, both back and forth, of time. Stairs and castles register like ghosts alluding to the world behind. 

What was taken away from the ‘old world’ of Novalis, Kraus breathes life into once more. It is not difficult to decipher that he is interested in symbols and mythology - he is known for his repeating allegorical nods, his oft blue pallet, his butterflies and stars. For Kraus what is contained in the painting, can be found within ourselves. I wanted to reach past the canvas and find out what goes into these powerful compositions, what philosophy and belief systems not only feed Kraus’ alchemical renderings, but how he himself moves in the world. 

Interview by Leah Gudmundson

Moon City, 2022

Oil and pigment on linen, 152 x 122 cm, Courtesy Peres Projects

Leah Gudmundson: Do you read a lot? Who is an author, or what is a novel you’ve read that has moved you?

Dylan Solomon Kraus: Yeah, I’ve definitely read a lot. At different times in my life, different books have been really influential. Growing up I read the Narnia series, Tolkien, Goosebumps and Harry Potter. As a kid, I was always reading, it was a way to travel. I love those early books where you just sink in so deeply and get lost.

LG: I’m a huge Harry Potter fan. They were my first experience of being immersed in magic.

DSK: I love that feeling of diving in and imagination. Different books for different eras. A lot of the things I used to love were appropriate at one time, but I’m now into something totally different. Now I’ll spend time on a few books on more of a long-term basis. I’ll work with a book for a long time and try to really understand it.

A lot of the reading I do at the moment is pertaining to my work. I’m currently reading a book about perspective drawing. I actually love it, and it takes a lot of brain power. Otherwise I’ve been working on this one poem by a romantic poet from Germany, Novalis. It’s called Hymns to the Night. It’s old-fashioned, and there are some cringey parts to it, but certain lines really resonate with me. I’ve read it over many years, and now I’m concentrating on it. Different things have rung true to me through the years, so I keep turning back to it. I love the romantic era. All of those people who were writing 150 years ago, responding to the Industrial Revolution. They were just like, “Noooo, why would you do this? Let’s just have a nice time. We love nature, we love childhood, we love the non-analytical mind.” [Novalis] says in the poem, “The treasures of nature turn to dust and ash in words and number.” How something once was so magical, and then people started to classify everything and suck the life out of it. I feel like we grew up in that time. As a kid, you ask a question, “What are the stars?” and someone tells you, “They’re giant gaseous balls in different universes.” You’re like, “Oh, okay.” Before people would have amazing, inspiring mythology, pointed to things that connected you. So, I love that era, and I turn to it a lot. I feel like we’ve had a lot stolen from us in humanity in terms of imagination in favour of “current authorities say this is the way it is, case closed,” narrow-mindedness.

LG: Mythology was lost to classification. People trying to put things in boxes.

DSK: For anything, you can divide it down to its tiniest little equation, but really there’s so much more to it. Things develop, things interact in different mysterious ways. It’s not all so logical and straightforward, so it’s good to leave room for the unknown in our understanding of the world. 

LG: In your paintings, there are many symbols pointed to the organised chaos of the universe. Are you a determinist? Do you believe our paths are already laid out for us?

DSK: I believe that a lot of paths are laid out but there is still freedom within. The planets, the seasons, bird migration 

all follow cycles and paths. In nature, you see a lot of determined pathways that are on a corkscrew, so it’s 3D, not just repeating itself but constantly developing. For human beings, what really sets us apart from our animal companions on this Earth is that we have, I do believe, free will through thinking. You don’t have free will over how much money your parents have when you’re born or what school you go to, or the shitty rules that somebody puts upon you, but you do actually have the capacity to change your mind, and that is a huge, world-changing power.

Untitled (clock), 2022

Oil on linen, 36 x 36 cm, Courtesy Peres Projects

The Shining, 2022

Oil on linen, 153 x 122 cm, Courtesy Peres Projects

LG: You believe that human beings have agency.

DSK: Yeah, that’s an amazing thing about the human being. History is on a path, seasons, technology, the Earth is on 

a path. But the human being, in lieu of all those paths, has freedom, which is so unique when you think about it looking out into the cosmos. You have the ability, through thinking, to actually change the way you see the world, which in turn changes so much. A duck is never going to do that. A duck is always going to see things as a duck quack quack. As a human, we hold the key for anything being able to happen, through the human being. I do believe there are predetermined paths, but you always have the ability to choose, and that’s what I believe is important that every person discovers within themselves. Self-realization. 

LG: You have a catalogue of your paintings called Occult Science. Do you have a specific interest in the chapters of the history of occultism, such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn1 and its key figures, or are you interested in it as a broader universal application as “knowledge of the hidden?”

DSK: There are so many different ways of seeing. I would suggest that there are worlds behind the world we live in. Things are not as they appear. What you see in front of you is not always what it really is. So that alludes to there being an occult reality behind things. I think that there’s a universal language for all cognitive beings through symbols, through relations between symbols, through processes that are universal. Moon, Sun. Now we don’t have that unity anymore because throughout the whole history of humanity, every human looked out under the stars at night, every human had a fire in their house, we were all subjected to fairly similar conditions. Now, we’re out of that. But, I think there is still a universal language of behind the scenes, and those who look towards that will find it. I had a show called “That Which Reveals Itself to Whom It May Concern” which I think is a good title. 

LG: Meaning, if you look hard enough, you’ll see what you need to see?

DSK: Everyone has a puzzle piece. If you look, you’ll see it. Occult Science is a reference to a Rudolf Steiner book, which was influential to me. I’m still very interested in that time - the turn of the century. I find his ideas really interesting and clear, and I reference him a lot.

LG: Do you like the secret society side of the occult, Aleister Crowley for example?

DSK: I’m not very familiar with it, I’ve taken a slightly different pathway. He’s probably somebody who’s looking behind the curtain though. I think a lot of that stuff is like the sorcerer’s apprentice. You have to be careful. How you get in, what you open, what you’re doing, because everything is real, and super meaningful. I’ve kind of avoided Crowley, but I see him in history. Blavatsky I like more.

LG: Crowley can be seen as more of a malevolent figure.

DSK: Yeah, I suppose I need to learn more about him.

LG: The basis of Crowley’s ideas were interesting, his philosophy, but his execution was sometimes questionable. However, they’re interesting applications to how he lived, how one can live.

DSK: You have to work so hard, to stay focused on the prize - your goal. It’s so easy when you open up into these realms to get lost in the fog. There is an objective after all. That’s my personal philosophy, and I would never impose that on anybody else. But there is a clear goal having to do with humanities relationship with the cosmos and the divine that needs to be taken up by each individual in their path of development.

LG: How do you deal with the intertwining of art and money? I have such a tough time with this relationship because I think art is a beautiful esoteric creation, and it’s debased when it enters the art market. It’s assigned to a currency based value, and can further just become a placeholder for money. 

DSK: I feel like art has a lot of value. Some art does, some art doesn’t. You see in time. A lot of stuff loses a lot of value, and is gassed up. I think the real problem isn’t that art is worth money, I think it’s that the market determines the type of art that flourishes and there’s a lot of inflated value which upsets the natural order of things causing issues. 

I feel like within the art market some people are really brilliant people, some gallerists, some curators, some collectors. Just like you have some really brilliant artists in the art world. But there’s also a lot of not so brilliant people too who just like shiny stuff. They’re just at the beginning of the process and it takes time to see what ideas really hold water, whether you’re an artist or collector or appreciator. It takes many years to see what art has lasting power and meaning, so the present moment is always a little inaccurate of what is actually potent.

I think being an artist, you’re like a sacrificial goat in the system to some degree. They’re going to drain your blood and you give it to them, you turn the content of your life into pieces of art that people use to further their own understandings and journeys. I was at a Francis Bacon show in England, and sometimes you see so much pain. He’s up on the pedestal in agony, and we’re just looking at the shivering man skinned alive, it’s so real. That, I think, is a lot like the path of the artist. You give, give, give and then the work is just up there for people to reflect into. There is more value to earth in a piece of art than a car or yacht or something, it attests to so much more, and good to remember its value. 

LG: It’s bothersome to me because I feel like the people that actually appreciate the art can’t afford it. 

DSK: Art used to be in everybody’s life. You look back in history, and a wine pourer was a goose. It was in the railings of an apartment building, at the end of a spoon. Art has been extracted like a serum from society and squirted into these white cubes. It’s like what they do to butterflies when they colonize the rainforest. They take them, stick a pin in it and put it on their wall. Kill the thing in lieu of just enjoying the life and the magic of it. The way to really take it back is the Joseph Beuysian idea that every person is an artist. I think by that he means every person has the potential for creative movements in life, whether that’s production, contemplation, the way you want to live with your family. There’s so many opportunities to be creative that have been stolen from people and now it’s more and more like, there’s one way to be. There’s one this or that. I think it’s so tragic. That’s like the real root of that issue. Art is a great example of it. It’s extracted and put into a cage. But the solution lies not in the market end but in the individual’s capacity to be creative in society, therefore delivering art back to everyday life!

Mystical City, 2022

Oil on linen, 102 x 77 cm, Courtesy Peres Projects

Seven Houses, 2020

Oil on wood panel, 25 x 20 cm, Courtesy of the artist

Milky Way Over Flooded City, 2022

Oil on linen, 153 x 122 cm, Courtesy Peres Projects

LG: Society likes to take the magical, capitalize on it, put it in a cage, or kill it.

DSK: People love to do that. I feel like we’re doing it to ourselves with technology currently. Literally building a cage for ourselves.

LG: It’s quite scary. Do you feel the weight of the world? If yes, how do you deal with that feeling?

DSK: I definitely feel that feeling, but I deal with it in trying to accept that things are beyond my control. Whatever is within my control, I’m going to handle. My reaction to things I can handle, but I can’t control the world. I think that’s the smartest thing to realize. I think that people really have to take an individual grip on reality, because there’s going to be winter. You look at history, all the terrible things. I was looking at these Egon Schiele paintings for example. Paintings of him, his wife, and his child that never was born. He, his baby in utero, and his wife all died from the Spanish flu.

LG: There has been so much pain and suffering beyond personal control. Circumstantial history. 

DSK: The painting was unfinished too, and it was like, what would you do? Tell them that this is going to happen? No, you still have to live and you still have to paint and even if something bad is going to happen, you still have to operate as well as you can and knowing that doesn’t always help. I think in a way it’s like in AA, where you hear, not everything is within your control. I think that’s smart because we live in a world with an addict mentality, and that is the first step of finding out what you can do and what you cannot do.

LG: You can be mindful about how you react to things.

DSK: Yeah, but I think that whatever happens is probably inevitable. Not inevitable when it comes to what humans can decide, but there are tidal waves coming from far back. What you or I do today and tomorrow isn’t going to change that. We’re going to witness it. I do believe in alchemy. All the pain, all the experiences you have, you’re a fucking crazy potion. You’re transforming this substance inside of you, and turning it into something in the end. Even if you suffer and die and everything goes wrong, that’s a special recipe that your being is going through in a course of great transformation. It stems from the idea of cycles, things can end and things begin again, and knowing that.

LG: Things are always ebbing and flowing. There’s eventually going to be sunshine after a storm.

DSK: Being in Europe, for me, the history is so overwhelming everywhere. Ancient Greece, fascist Germany, going through Poland on the train lines. You’re just like, “damn, shit happens.” It goes down, and some people have to bear the weight to that. Innocent people have to bear the weight of that. People confronting those challenges with courage and bravery is the way we have survived to this point. Nowadays, there is so much cowardice and passive expectation that someone or some government will take care of you… a hilarious notion. There’s a definite parallel to the last century. The industrial revolution, now the technological revolution. All the nationalist sentiments. The economy being unstable. It’s frightening how similar it is.

LG: I think it’s even more accelerated in a sense. There have always been peasants and royalty, but it feels like  the technological revolution is amplifying the wealth disparity at a new rate. Now you can’t do anything if you don’t have a smartphone. Last summer, I was like fuck it, I don’t want to have a phone. I had a flip phone, and I didn’t have a computer for a while. You can’t do anything! I couldn’t access my bank.

DSK: I hate that. It pisses me off. I can’t ride the train without my phone now. I hate it! It makes me so annoyed. We’re so co-dependent on this thing and it doesn’t even function well. It’s so one dimensional. It could be so much better. Like Instagram, you just flip one way, where it could be like 5th dimension thinking. It could be so creative. We could be using these phones for seriously helping people. Instead it’s tripped into the most basic thing.

LG: Yeah, we’re looped in. We’re very looped in.

DSK: The other day I was watching the movie Labyrinth with David Bowie. The goblin king kidnaps the child and gives him this glowing orb, and he’s like, “In it you’ll see anything you want to see,” and that’s how he gets the child. Because the child just stares into this fucking orb. It’s like your phone, it’s crazy. I was a child when that movie was being made so I’m like- that’s me! I’m in the Goblin King’s house looking at my Instagram.

LG: We’re stuck in the orb. It’s terrible. So much time spent staring into something that’s just an illusion, killing actual human relations. What is your relationship with other human beings like? How do you try and interact with people?

DSK: When in doubt follow the golden rule, treat others the way you would like to be treated in that situation, but I’m always learning more and more. I try to really accept people for where they are at and recognize becoming who you are is a process and not all the stages are pretty. See all people as anything. Anybody can be anybody in front of you. I try to always give someone the space to be who they are, not put a preconception on somebody. You could be a king or you could be like a little angry, bitter person. Someone who looks one way isn’t always that way inside. I love to say the first thing when I see somebody is, how are you? I always remember to do that, but nobody’s perfect. I mean, I’m sure I have a lot of people who are mad at me. Don’t like me for one reason or another. I’ve been in fights before. But I try to keep it cool. Now that I’m living out in a foreign country it’s been a really interesting experience. I’m stepping out of all my old social patterns, and I’m given a chance to try a new operating system out.

Reflection, 2022

Oil on linen,103 x 76 cm, Courtesy Peres Projects

LG: When you live in a foreign country you are also submitted to a different way of self-reflection and observation, which I think in turn leads to having more empathy and compassion.

DSK: Things like pain and loss are so universal, and everybody’s feeling some type of way and I try to remember that. There’s always somebody stressing about something really serious. Somebody’s family is unwell, or somebody has a court case, or somebody has a big thing hanging over their head. I think about those people, and try to be grateful too, for everything I have.

LG: That’s a good way of being. When you’re a bit younger, it’s more difficult to do that. Then as you get older, you realize that a lot of people are suffering.

DSK: You learn that through having your own experiences that maybe weren’t the easiest or best. Those are the experiences that give you compassion for other people. I’ve had so many shitty jobs in my life: service industry, construction. I always remember what it’s like to have somebody scoff at you, so I never try to play like that. The people I know who have been through the most are often the most understanding.

LG: You’re in Berlin now. How is it living in Berlin compared to New York or elsewhere in America? Do you feel like an outsider at all?

DSK: Oh, I definitely feel like an outsider here, but I always feel like an outsider. Even in my hometown. So I’m kind of down with that. Berlin is teaching me so much, the history here is really important as we go into the future. I try to make sense of everything that has happened and let it inform how I go forward in the future. A stone’s throw from my studio is the “Plotzensee Memorial” which I visit often and reflect upon the past, the tragedies and also the incredible bravery coming from German citizens and others who stood up to the national socialists knowing full well what it would mean for them. New York is a younger city, an amalgamation of many places which makes it very special but the cost of living is getting out of control which in turn affects the social life of the city. It’s not at all the same place I moved to when I arrived.

LG: It seems really hard to live in New York now as an artist.

DSK: I think what I paid for rent when I moved there was definitely less than half of what people would pay now. I got paid probably the same thing that somebody in those jobs would now. I’m just like, wow, I could never do it. Being in Berlin is like an interesting start. It’s a great opportunity to see how other people live. Older cultures, different cultures, different foods, different ways of living in a city, a different relationship with the individual to society. I think it will always be living in me, this experience of first coming here. I’m taking it easy and I don’t know where I’m going to end up. 

LG: I have a lot of friends that live there and it feels like a more humanely organized city. I feel like they actually value children for instance.

DSK: The way they treat children is incredible. You don’t have to walk more than five blocks to have a world class park. It’s totally safe for your kids, it’s an amazing place. Crossing the border in any direction, they don’t have that. I mean, that I’ve crossed yet. Berlin is cool because it has a lot of youth culture. It was cheap. The prices are rising now too, but it has this tradition of youth culture, tradition of alternative cultures, tradition of immigrants, which makes it a really poppin’ city.

LG: They have more subsidies to help integrate immigrants, or support artists. Living in France, we don’t have that at all and it’s so frustrating. All of my friends in Berlin, it feels like they can sustain themselves more easily.

DSK: It’s true, though I can see it evaporating a bit. It’s like the same thing that’s happening to every city in the world. Even my city, Pittsburgh, it’s being gentrified and transformed – more chain stores, less uniqueness.

LG: I’m from a small town in Saskatchewan in Canada, and when I was growing up, it was a tiny little city, tiny houses, bungalows. Now there’s the city and the rest is big box stores. It’s a parking lot everywhere. 

DSK: That’s the homogenized culture. 

LG: How do you think growing up when you did in small town Pittsburgh shaped you? Were there particular formative experiences that stayed with you?

DSK: Pittsburgh is a nice city because it’s small enough where you can be a kid. You can walk across the city, but there’s also stadiums and different neighbourhoods. It was an awesome small city to grow up in and I was influenced so much by it. I was doing graffiti when I was a teenager, travelling all over the city meeting other kids from all walks of life. I would go under an old bridge or break into an old building and paint a piece. It was an amazing, fun time. You’d go under a bridge and see a treasure chest: different colours and shapes. That really formed part of me.  It was a cool way to spend childhood, but I moved around a bit. I grew up until I was ten in a more rural part of Ohio. I think that was important because I had a proper childhood. I would spend all day outside running around, with nothing around for miles but cornfields. I loved that. I feel like it preserved a real innocence in me and a deep love of nature. To know how to make a fire and know how to chop wood and go fishing. I’m so grateful I have that in my life.

LG: I think it’s also is very good for the imagination because when you have less, you use your brain more. You can make something out of nothing. Do you listen to music while you paint?

DSK: Hell yeah, I listen to music all day. I love trap/ rap. I love Young Thug -free Young Thug- poor guy locked up. I listen to a lot of rap, I grew up listening to it. I listen to a lot of classical too, or country. Dancehall in the summer, because there’s always so much new music. I’m in the studio all day everyday so I burn through music. I’m literally always listening to new music.

LG: I always find it interesting because everybody’s different. I have a friend that’s a painter and he can’t listen to music. He said it influences him too much. I like when artists listen to music because it means some of the song is in the painting.

DSK: I’m calling a painting right now Young Thug in honour of him. It’s all alchemy. Anything you’re taking in at the time, what you’re thinking about. If I’m in a fight with my friend, I’m thinking about that obsessively while I paint. I’m thinking about society and culture and what I can control and what I can’t. My attitude towards what I see in the world and what is frightening and terrifying to me. How I think about that is in the physicality of the painting. That’s what was so cool about when I saw The Lady with Ermine this weekend I was like, I know what’s behind this. I know the hours and I know all the thoughts and looking back and going forward. I know the person, the fingerprints that get left in it.

City With the Pearl Gate II, 2022

Oil on linen, 76 x 103 cm, Courtesy of Peres Projects

LG: What does the ermine represent?

DSK: It’s like a weasel. The whole thing is super bizarre. I think that painting is magic. I think it’s not a portrait, I think it’s a math equation. I think he used the portrait as an excuse. The ermine is kind of a joke in some ways. It was a symbol of purity, but it’s with [Ludovico Sforza’s] mistress. [Sforza’s] nickname was “The Fat White Rat.” That’s what people called him. So, he had a portrait painted of his mistress with this ermine. There was humour and a little bit of jest in it. It’s more powerful than the Mona Lisa. Whatever the Mona Lisa has in it, I think it’s more litty, personally. 

LG: How do you think about love?

DSK: I think about love as a great sacrificial power. It’s the thing that makes everything really happen. The forces alone are not enough. Love is behind everything, even when you light a match, that warmth, the light of the sun, the rain in the clouds all love. Everything is love. I think true love is actually caring for others more than the self. When you were asking, how do I treat people: now I try not to intervene on people. I try to let people live their lives. Even if someone’s going to do something I don’t agree with, I’m not going to be like, don’t do that. I want my friends to go through their experiences. I recognize I had to do certain things, even make terrible mistakes, hurt people. But if I wouldn’t have done that, I probably would never consider people more, had I not had felt bad about certain interactions, but that to me is love, that process and allowing for that in people’s lives who are close to us.

LG: Going through those processes can elicit huge lessons in compassion towards the self, and others.

DSK: I think love is the secret power. I think wisdom gives birth to love. Being lovey dovey or thinking you’re being caring can be harmful. It’s like feeding birds bread. I always want to feed birds, I love them, but I know it’s not good for them. I know that the bird seeking out its own food is way better for that bird, for its children, for the survival of those birds, for their lives to continue. 

I think there’s an inverted way of loving. I don’t think you can eliminate evil in the world. I think you can only counter it. Like the idea of we’re going to kill the bad guy, we’re going to win the drug war, we’re going to stop the thing, the bad man. I think you can never really stop the bad man because the bad man always comes back. But you can counter it. That countering it is creative love. If kids are having a hard time, build them a school or something. There’s ways to counter the bad stuff. Rather than punish people and send them to jail, give them a resource to help them. The justice system is so flawed. We as society should be thinking, how have we failed the criminal? 

LG: I think the reason the criminal -whatever that means- I think the reason anyone commits a questionable act is because of a lack of love, actually.

DSK: Every time the criminal does something wrong, we as a society should ask, how am I responsible for this? This man had to steal something – how come? He didn’t have enough. That’s our fault. It’s interesting though, because I don’t want the world to be run by a church. If the government acts out of a moral obligation, that’s actually really dangerous. Who decides what’s moral? My morality is probably different from yours, and everybody else’s. That’s why it has to come to the individual. We have to lead and educate our brothers and sisters and everybody, to be able to decide on their own to do what’s right for them. In this day and age we are all criminals.

LG: How do you personally determine the way that you live? What values shape how you decide to be in the world?

DSK: I try to live intentionally, and not force things. If I want somebody or something, I’m not going to force it. I’m going to let that planet revolution try to come back, and wait for the right time for things.

I believe in basic philosophies that really affect me; I personally believe in the idea of reincarnation, which I think has a humongous effect on how I walk through the world. I think that everything we do has meaning. Like the number of hairs on your head has meaning. I think every word you say, every action you do, I think it has meaning. Nobody really thinks like that. A lot of people are like, “nothing means anything.” But I actually think it does. Upon self-reflection, everything means something. Doesn’t mean it has to be right. You don’t have to always be right. I do think what you do is shaping something, you’re painting a picture by how you live your life. 

I think those two things really inform me: thinking that the end is not the end, and everything you do actually has meaning. Each person ends up with a tally at the end. That’s how I allow bad people to be bad, because I personally think everything will be accounted for. Which is a radical weird idea I think is not found in culture today. Let good people be good, let bad people be bad, happy people be happy, sad people be sad. Everybody is taking a different path and everything will be accounted for. Personally, I think there is super deep meaning in everybody’s life. As an individual, you are taking on responsibility for what you do. Certain things are out of your control, but those that are not, I think that’s a radical idea.

LG: What about goal based decision making? Do you know what kind of future you want? What you want it to look like, or do you just flow from situation to situation?

DSK: Oh, I definitely know how I want to live. I love the idea of being less co-dependent on box stores and things like that. I would love to live more with a connection to agriculture. The financial aspects of that are tricky. It’s so sad that a vegetable is worth nothing. We value the stupidest things. 

I have experience in agriculture so I would love to one day have a small family farm type of thing, that’s my dream. Whether that’s attainable, I have no idea. But I would love to wake up every morning, look outside, work in a garden, have real problems like the roof needs to be fixed. That’s really been taken away from people. To be able to live like that is impossible because how do you have health insurance? It used to be that everybody lived that way and were self-sufficient. 

I would also love to work more with education. I think old people are stuck in their ways and we need to focus on the future. We actually have to invest in children and wait like 20 years. I would like to work in education, be in agriculture, nature – not in the fucking pod out here. I did my time in the city. That was really to get where I am now, to be a painter. I went to New York and wanted to be an artist. I found art there, and wanted to be an artist. So that’s my end goal, to have just a nice place and live out in the country close to nature. 

LG: I feel you. I’ve been in Paris for ten years now and I’m at the end of my tether. Everything is so disconnected, and I’ve been having such a strong yearning to be back in nature. I recently went back to Saskatchewan and I felt an overwhelming sense to live more simply and in nature.

DSK: Yeah you can have a tree in your yard there. If I had a tree in my yard living in New York City, it would put me with the upper echelons of society.

LG: My friend has an apple tree in his backyard. You can have an apple tree and make cider. It’s just so lovely.

DSK: Isn’t it? That’s wealth. Apples are in season right now, and it’s like unbelievable how many apples are being given away. That’s how generous nature is. It’s give, give, give, give- offering everything up. And we live in this world where it’s like, “This tree has 1600 apples, divided by this price which yields us approximately 60 dollars.” That is so cheap and whack. No class. It’s the way of the world, people are hungry and greedy, so there’s always going to be that fire burning. But yeah, I love the generosity of an apple tree. I’m always humbled.

LG: My friend has to give them away, or scoop them up and do something with them because there’s so many. Okay, I have one more question. If you were given the opportunity to direct a film, what would it be about?

DSK: I love mythology. I love archetypal stories. Most good stories can be traced back to some myth of an archetypal force of small power versus big, bad power. I love horror and Sci-Fi because I feel like those are two genres you can talk about a lot of things that are difficult to talk about. You can talk about class, gender, race, everything so much more easily in a Sci-Fi because you can invent a parallel world where these types of people get treated this way, and other types of people get treated that way. I love that freedom in Sci-Fi. I think you just always end up back on Earth.

I think that all stories are internal, you are every character in the story. Movies like The Shining are really about our own self development. You are the child, you are the madman, you are the woman, you are the house. It’s all going on inside of you. You have to beat the labyrinth.

So, I would probably do something mythological and Sci-Fi. I would try to talk about the shit that bothers me about the world. Maybe a hero story of somebody overcoming that. I believe in the superpower of love, so I would make a movie as a really creative example of that. Overcoming the craziest, darkest thing that nobody thinks they can overcome.

LG: I love J.G. Ballard for that. A lot of Sci-Fi movies were based off his novels, some very fitting with your work. There is a book of his short stories Vermillion Sands, one is called “The Cloud Sculptors of Coral D,” which was about a society of working class cloud sculptors. They work in little spaceship style pods and rich people would hire them to sculpt portraits and artworks in their peripheries, out of clouds. It’s such a fantastical setting, but it still tethers down to human relations, relations in the world between people. 

DSK: Isn’t that really what everything is?

Interior, 2022,

Oil on linen, 23 x 30 cm, Courtesy Peres Projects

Cosmic Clock, 2022

Oil on linen,103 x 76 cm, Courtesy Peres Projects

Genesis, 2022

Oil on linen, 76 x 103 cm, Courtesy Peres Projects