“I’m very concerned with beauty,” says the artist Khalif Tahir Thompson. “I’m concerned with livelihood and experience. I’m concerned with inviting viewers to really enter a work and get lost.” Born in the Canarsie area of Brooklyn, in 1995, Thompson grew up in the Glenwood Projects. After losing his father at age 11, the artist entered a difficult period. “There was a lot of deconstruction in my life,” he says, referring to a time of homelessness, beginning when he was 16. Still, Thompson never let go of his ambition. He got himself accepted into the LaGuardia High School of Music and Art, and stayed involved in the arts despite the challenges in his personal life. Thompson will graduate from The Yale School of Art this year. Combining various materials in his paintings, Thompson explores themes of race, sexuality, and spirituality. In almost abstract settings of energetic color, spaces that contain mysteriously floating symbols, he places scenes of intimacy and emotion. —Jeanne Malle