Khalif Tahir Thompson: Send in the Clowns by Jessica Lynne

To stand in front of a Khalif Tahir Thompson painting is to feel a strange yet gratifying sense of familiarity. Strange in that as a viewer, you are aware that the person depicted on the artist's canvas is not necessarily the portrait of anyone you know or have known. Comforting in that despite personal distance, Thompson's scenes are so elegant in their depiction of the quotidian that you might almost be certain that you have in fact been implicated in the circumstances or atmospheres rendered. As I walked around his studio one muggy August morning this past summer, I could have sworn that the paintings in progress were from my own memories of a dashing elder playing it cool at a soirée or of a trek home in the rain after a day that threatened to never end.

Even so, Thompson’s latest body of work is highly specific in its directional gaze as it conjures a Brooklyn – where the artist was born, raised, and still lives – that belongs to his loved ones and kin, a Brooklyn whose landscape changes almost daily it seems. Indeed, the built environment is as much a protagonist in the stories these paintings tell as the people who populate them. In Lambent, 2026, the exterior façade of a braiding salon is covered in detailed renderings of hairstyles. The door, windows, and sidewalk display all feature the faces of models turned at varying angles to accentuate the diversity of styles such a salon and its stylists can offer. Even the few loitering pigeons seem compelled to linger awhile. Such businesses are, in fact, central beauty sites for Black communities throughout New York, and in the past, it was sometimes quite impossible for me to walk down certain blocks without being tempted to ask a braider for her next open appointment. In the foreground of Playground, 2026, a young man wearing a backpack pushes a baby in a stroller past a bright, multicoloured playground; apartment blocks are visible in the background. This could be an older brother or cousin, or a young father on childcare duty for an afternoon. 

Arch Diner, 2026, a nostalgic rendering of the beloved though now closed eatery that was once located in the Canarsie neighbourhood of Brooklyn, is almost haunting in its nature. A lone figure approaches the diner’s entryway at night, not a star in the sky. City traffic continues to move without disruption.

Thompson is in a reflective mood, but the paintings are not sorrowful or mourning. This is the tricky thing about nostalgia. It feels sweet and romantic but can also cloud the truth of a thing as it once was; the line to walk is thin. Thompson doesn’t so much expect that a viewer will maintain the same relationship to the borough of his childhood that he has, as he seems to declare that one cannot fully understand this place without a glimpse into the city as he has experienced it. In Two Brothers, 2026, the city’s skyline as seen from the Brooklyn Promenade, provides the backdrop to a portrait of two men dressed for a night out in attire typical of the early aughts. There is a confidence in each of their gazes despite body language that might suggest otherwise. Thompson’s rendering is tender, ascribing an air of nobility to the young men that cannot always be assumed to be bestowed by others. In this, the artist’s utilisation of the representational mode of painting, as anchored by the Black figure, places him in lineage with a painter such as Kerry James Marshall for whom investigations of Blackness within the traditions of Western portraiture are paramount. Like Marshall, Thompson’s paintings can be read as discrete universes in pursuit of a radical visibility, yet taken together, they are a cipher.

Though divergent in mediums, we might also read Thompson’s conceptual address in relationship to the artist Romare Bearden (1911–1988) and his monumental work, The Block, 1971. Comprised of six panels, The Block presents various aspects of Harlem life as Bearden regarded it. The church and the barbershop and the liquor store and the nightclub are all part of the same ecosystem – the block – whose energy is constituted by the ways in which these local institutions shape and inform one another. Bearden was a master collagist and in The Block he  employs his use of watercolour, graphite, and paper of various textures in order to pay tribute to a storied locale. As the scenes of the street are depicted, Bearden choreographs a dance between the public and the private with each panel also featuring a window into a private, domestic setting that is as dynamic as the rambunctious happenings outdoors. Bearden asks his viewers to practise a different kind of looking that honours the minutiae of living with the sensation of profundity. What they do not share in their pursuit of materiality, I think both artists do share in sensibility: the provocation towards a revised contemplation, perception, and commemoration.

Thompson’s interiors, like his depictions of exterior environs, often feature one or two subjects, yet unlike his paintings that capture the movement of the streets, his domestic settings convey moments of pause; perhaps a hesitation shortly before a decision is made to greet a guest, return to a card game, or step out into the evening. In Pearl, 2026, a particularly sophisticated portrait, a woman wearing a white dress stares ahead quixotically while standing in front of a dressing table. A wig-display mannequin head stands on the dressing table beside a wall mirror which reflects the woman’s back.

Thompson plays with time, contorting generational lines in search of a truth. For example, the dressing table behind the woman in white is modelled after a similar piece of furniture owned by the artist’s grandmother, while the woman herself is a beautiful rendering of the artist’s elder sister. The wig-display mannequin belongs to no one in particular, but at the same time to many of us Black women all at once. Here, again, a predecessor emerges in the form of Alice Neel whose canvases are defined by their dynamic, expressive brushstrokes and whose close attention to the people around her – particularly women – and to her New York City communicate an honesty of presence that transcends one’s singular experience.

Regardless of how we find Thompson’s subjects, they share an ebullience due in large part to the artist’s use of colour. Red walls are potent. Orange sidewalks singe. White gowns transfix. Blue skies are as mysterious as they are calming. This playful intensity is in dialogue with the manner in which colour was deployed by the Fauvists in order to achieve a kineticism within the painting. We might turn to the work of Kees van Dongen (1877–1968) to locate another predecessor for Thompson, for van Dongen understood that the flamboyance of colour, not unlike Marshall or Neel, was necessary to communicate the arresting nature of life, its highs and its lows. Thompson has given us then, some of life’s interludes which are, nonetheless, just as captivating, just as magnificent, and if we look closely enough, just as recognisable no matter where we call home.

Jessica Lynne is a writer, editor, and art critic based in The Hudson Valley, New York
Text © Jessica Lynne