the art doesn’t necessarily reflect the artist. The painter’s personality is so big it nearly hops out of our late afternoon Zoom call.
“I’m very … I don’t want to say bubbly, but … what do you call it? I’m just very not as serious,” he says. “Sometimes my work seems a lot more serious.”
He’s not necessarily wrong. Thompson’s primary practice is portraiture, which he uses to chronicle the human condition. While the subject matter may have a stoic sensibility, focusing on themes concerning race, family, and the art historical, the execution does not. His work, recently on display at the Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery in Luxembourg, uses bright color and layered textural elements to craft a world that’s both emotional and striking.
This boldness is exactly what helped Thompson rise out of Brooklyn and find success in the global art scene.
Chasing Fame
Thompson, who grew up in the Glenwood Projects in the Canarsie area of Brooklyn, first learned he had a unique perspective in the trenches of middle school.
“I was very intensely bullied,” he says of his public-school experience. “…Growing up in Brooklyn and being black and being [LGBTQ] … I was just very different.”
At a time when most kids try their hardest to blend in, Thompson used his differences to stand out. This helped him secure a spot at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, the real-life high school that inspired the 1980 film Fame . There, he found his people, but he struggled to keep up.
“I couldn’t afford a sketch book,” he says, admitting his teacher scolded him for tearing pages out of old sketchbooks in the classroom. “No one was going to jump out and save me and support me in that way. I had to put myself in the position to be helped or I had to help myself.”
Thompson carried this fire throughout the rest of his art career.
The Worst They Can Do Is Say No
Thompson transferred into Purchase to study liberal arts after a year at SUNY Cobleskill. An offhand email to a Purchase studio art teacher led him to the School of Art+Design, where he was able to study his practice intensively. At the time, Thompson had missed the deadline to apply for the BFA program, and asked the teacher if he could take an art-focused liberal arts elective. The teacher saw his portfolio and convinced the School of Art+Design to admit him anyway.
“I was just expecting just to get into the class,” he says, “But he took those images [of my work]… and went straight to Art+Design.”
In his last year, Thompson applied to residencies that he admittedly “had no business applying to” (the kind primarily for mid-career artists). His mantra? The worst they can do is say no—but some of them actually said yes, including the prestigious 2021 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Painting and the Vermont Studio Center. The latter led to the first major sale of his work and primed him for success with future solo shows (think Dubai and Paris), museum acquisitions (think the Smithsonian and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts), and a spot at The Armory Art Show at the Javits Center last fall.
After receiving a master’s degree in painting and printmaking from Yale School of the Arts, Thompson wrapped his first museum exhibition at the Harvey B. Gantt Center of African American Culture in Charlotte, NC. Gearing up for a solo show at the Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery in Paris, he continues to bet on himself.
“I had a lot of friends that lost their way or didn’t make it out of school, and that could have easily been me,” he recounts. “But I just slithered [toward] that twinkle of light in every situation to motivate the next step and just be positive that way.”
