‘They digest externally’: the artist who creates paintings with live flies

For over a decade, John Knuth has created art using the regurgitation of flies and after he lost his home in the California wildfires, his work has a new perspectiveOne morning in Denver as artist John Knuth was getting his exhibition ready at the David B Smith Gallery, the police knocked on the door to check he wasn’t housing a dead body. “They said, ‘We’ve got a report of a lot of flies in here. Is there a dead body or anything rotting?’” Knuth recalls to the Guardian over Zoom.The hundreds of flies emerging from Knuth’s gallery were actually his collaborators. For over a decade, Knuth has been creating paintings using the regurgitation of tens of thousands of flies. “When flies eat they digest externally,” explains Knuth. “They’re in a constant state of regurgitation. They land on a surface, puke up, suck it back in. Puke up, suck it back in.” After feeding the insects a mixture of acrylic colored paint and sugar water, the flies spend several weeks expelling the mixtures on to his canvases. “From that I get these really transcendent color connections.” Continue reading...