Khalif Thompson Explores Complex Relationships Among People And Spaces Through Elaborate, Elegant Collage
by Natasha Gural
A young Black woman leans on the right side of a table and gazes to the right, directing the viewer away from center and the abundance of vibrant flowers in a giant vase. A floral pattern replacing the window glass invites us to think about the fluidity of interior and exterior spaces.
The elegant sitter is artist Khalif Thompson’s older sister, Asia, who appears engrossed in thought and drawn away from her elaborate surroundings. Thompson takes us on an art historical journey in his contemporary reimagining of Edgar Degas’ A Woman Seated Beside a Vase of Flowers (1865). The original subject is believed to be Madame Paul Valpinçon, the wife of Degas’s schoolboy friend Paul Valpinçon. Paul’s father, Edouard Valpinçon, nurtured Degas’s artistic evolution by encouraging an interest in French neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.
Thompson’s use of vibrant colors enlivens the original depiction and draws us into a narrative on Black life. Eleven years his senior, Asia is the keeper of their grandmother’s archives and a “protector” of their family’s history, which plays a prominent role in Thompson’s art.
Thompson was inspired by the Degas masterpiece during a visit to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and named his lavishly embellished version composed of oil, pastel, raw silk, leather, suede, handmade paper, fabric, denim, and newsprint on canvas The Last Rose of Summer (2021).
“The Last Rose of Summer”
“She is very crafty and she loves decorating. She’s pretty recluse,” said Thompson, describing how the setting and pose celebrates Asia’s personality. “I had named it The Last Rose of Summer, and I did not know at the time that my sister was pregnant with my niece, and, as it turns out, the baby’s name was Summer. She was born this past October.”
Thompson’s artistic practice spans painting, drawing, collage, printmaking, and paper-making, with a focus on evocative portraiture and figuration that explores our complicated relationships with interior and exterior space, ourselves, and each other. He’s best known for his vivid, provocative large-scale paper mosaic collages featuring figures painted with oil and layered with handmade and found materials. His work engages us in a dialogue with his sitters through personal and visceral narratives of Black life and family dynamics. He painstakingly layers each work over three months or so, building on those narratives that force us to confront how we interact with others and our environments.
In September, Thompson will begin MFA studies at The Yale School of Art. He’s among some twenty-one artists admitted each year into the prestigious program, where students work in individual 300-square-foot studios. The extremely selective program accepts fewer than 6.5 percent of applicants every year, choosing from those with near-perfect grades, excellent test scores, and remarkable essays.
“I’m looking to experiment with different things. I want to get into some installation, video art, and sculpture to assist my painting practice, but painting is going to be my core practice,” said Thompson.
Born in Canarsie, Brooklyn, on September 25, 1995, Thompson lives and works in New York, alongside his partner, Jairo Serna, who is also a painter. Thompson earned a BA in Fine Arts from Purchase College in 2018, and quickly sold his first piece, a painting of Lenny Kravitz, to a man on the street for $70. Since being discovered by Black Art in America (BAIA) Founder and CEO Najee Dorsey, Thompson has gained a following among collectors who are drawn to his exuberant and emotional works that convey often unspoken queries into race, gender, spirituality, psychology, multi-generational family life, and personal identity.
Thompson participated in fellowships and residencies including: the EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop (RBPMW), a co-operative printmaking workspace in Manhattan founded in Chelsea in 1947 by the influential teacher, collaborator, and pioneering Black artist (1920-2003); the Vermont Studio Center (VSC); and Trestle Art Space in Brooklyn.
He is exclusively represented by BAIA.
“I’ve always done portraiture and figuration, since high school, and it’s something that’s very natural to me,” said Thompson, who is deeply inspired by Alice Neel, the trailblazing artist revered for her expressionistic portraits depicting friends, family, lovers, poets, artists, and strangers. That influence is evident in Thompson’s work, which similarly conveys honesty and integrity, intensely exposing and investigating all facets of human life and psyche.
James Baldwin sits legs crossed, looking directly at the viewer and smiling, his joyous demeanor underscored by the brazen red background. A caged bird rests on the table to his left, below a framed portrait of modernist painter Beauford Delaney against a contrasting yellow backdrop, and a bookcase stands against the wall to his right. Books are a recurring motif for Thompson, who values their inherent histories as he seeks to “imbue works with a sense of history and knowledge.”
Baldwin (2020), made of handmade paper (abaca, cotton, hemp), fabric, gold leaf, and construction paper on canvas, intimately honors the legacy and the persona of the renowned writer and activist.
“I wanted something that spoke to his sophistication, his style, his flamboyance,” said Thompson, who admires the openly gay Black writer. “I took different images and composed them into one. It’s kind of constructed, which I also like because it’s almost like a puzzle. He was a thinker, but he also enjoyed life and he was a romantic. He was definitely sensitive.”
We return to family life with Kareem & The Boys (2020), a captivating collage with Japanese paper, oil stick, and graphite on canvas depicting Thompson’s brother and his nephews Jayce and Levi.
“I start with a very simple concept and then I try to use the work to go where it wants to take me,” explained Thompson. “The color was very indicative of my brother, but it also became this relationship between not only a father and son, but brothers, my relationship with my brother, and the relationship between the two brothers…. I wanted to keep it simple, to not distract from the background since the couch is so busy.”
A joyful picture of two playful plush bears hangs above the boys, and a classified ad page from a comic book, featuring an image of the Incredible Hulk and a crying boy, crowns Kareem. The ad for the Boys Town National Hotline offers comfort for the weeping child, reminding us that “We all must deal with the Monster Within!”
“It speaks to generational curses and demons and toxic masculinity,” said Thompson. “It broke into different narratives for me, and our relationship, because he’s always been kind of a bully. He was always kind of like a beast, and now I’ve seen him as a father being a lot more gentle and more considerate. When you have a child, you have to deal with those demons that exist within you.”
Thompson’s familial portraits explore and reconcile conflict and interpersonal communication.
“The psychological and emotive element has always been consistent with my work,” said Thompson, who speaks with eloquence that mirrors his inimitable, sincere visual language. “My recent works have been involved with a lot more interior space and a transcendent kind of exterior-interior space, and expanding the world within my paintings and settings. I started building the settings for all my projects and forming the figure, and vice versa, and taking an overall look at bodies, characters, life, identity, and the relationship between individuals. It’s becoming a lot more about really having material embody these figures and having a playful index of art history, and my personal history and conversation, a lot of different life narratives and tropes.
“Relationships of family and romantic relationships carry a lot of stories and information, and they’re all very important. It’s a part of the language in painting that I’ve always been interested in and respected. I’m starting to do my own take on this. I’m a huge fan of a lot of different types of work, not just portraiture and figuration, but works with material, Minimalism, lots of different forms of Abstraction and Color Field. Painting has a very rich and expansive history, and there’s just so much you can go with, so many places you can go. There’s endless ways to engage in what is personal to you and you can be innovative and you can be different. I like putting my own stamp on things.”
For many artists across disciplines and geographies, the pandemic and quarantine encouraged journeying further into interiors. For Thompson, it was a combination of that isolation and introspection, along with a natural progression in his artistic process as well as personal transitions, such as moving into a new apartment.
“A lot of different things were happening for me, so there was a lot of reflection on interior space and making a space my own and creating a safe space for learning,” Thompson said. “A way of seeing outside became its own kind of concept that naturally evolved, that area between nature and structure and natural elements versus artificial ones, and how they relate to nature.”
Blackbird (2018), a collage of Japanese paper, house paint, tar, and oil stick on canvas uses the array of materials to build depth through layering while evoking painterly abstract brushstrokes. Thompson casually positions himself on a chair to the right of center in a self-portrait that emphasizes his relationship with interior space, amid a frenzy of plants and scattered objects. He created the work for his undergraduate thesis. Another self-portrait hangs above Thompson, amplifying the inner dialogue.
“This work was about a transitional timeline, and I felt overwhelmed for a while,” Thompson said. “I was thinking of Jennifer Packer (Yale University School of Art, MFA in 2012) at the time, in terms of how the figure and space could work in conjunction.”
“Blackbird”
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Natasha Gural is a multiple award-winning journalist, writer, and editor with 30 years of editorial experience, including executive roles at The Associated Press, Dow Jones, and Markets Media. A student of literature, art history, and studio art, Natasha has learned from leading scholars at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Oxford University, Clark University, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Natasha has been writing about art since 2002, for multiple publications, including The Associated Press and Forbes. She has traveled extensively to cover major art fairs and events, interviewing a wide array of world-renowned and emerging artists, as well as curators, art historians, collectors, scholars, and aesthetes. Her last contact with the global art world was covering TEFAF Maastricht in 2020. Natasha enjoys observing every level of the creative process, from inception to installation, in studios, galleries, and various spaces. Passionate about the art world, Natasha embraces every opportunity to engage key players to better understand and explain the changing dynamic. She seeks to accurately portray the art ecosystem in an ongoing process that immerses her in the art world. A first-generation American, Natasha was raised bilingual and has always been drawn to the innovators, rebels, and outsiders who break down boundaries and strive to broaden the continuum of art history. Her goal is always to fairly and accurately represent the accomplishments of artists in an effort to collectively celebrate the arts.
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