Honor Titus prefers a light touch. “Even my loud, screaming punk band was still jam-packed with nuance and subtlety,” he recently told The New York Times. Titus grew up in Brooklyn, the son of a first-generation Haitian mother and an African American–Puerto Rican father (a member of the seminal rap group Black Sheep). Following in his father’s footsteps, Titus formed a successful band in 2008. Eight years later, with no formal training, he switched to art and in 2020 had his first solo show. Titus’s career skyrocketed—even King Charles III has commissioned a portrait from him. His latest paintings are scenes of people playing tennis, the court a place where status, ambition, struggle, and power are captured in distilled planes and colors. “The tonality of tennis is so very rich and interests me greatly,” explains Titus. “The implications of leisure and class draw me in, while, as a player, I know it to be an absolutely maddening endeavor. A well-dressed struggle for victory can be analogous to life itself.” —Clara Molot