Honor Titus
b. 1989, United States
Honor Titus (b. 1989, Brooklyn, NY) is an American artist who lives and works in Los Angeles.
Titus is a self-taught painter whose work is deeply influenced by his creative past as a musician and poet. Before moving to Los Angeles in 2016 he assisted in the studio of artist Raymond Pettibon, who attended his poetry readings in New York.
Painted in a range of dark, luminous jewel tones, his paintings often depict faceless figures in minimal urban landscapes, reflecting the sense of isolation and loneliness that results from a condition of anonymity in the urban environment. Suffused with a sense of romance, Titus’s paintings are embedded with nostalgic references to a simpler time: a boy in baseball gear, a 1950s car painted cherry-red, a man with a bouquet of flowers in an old suit and fedora.
Titus’s simplified compositions and bold, flat patches of colour are inspired by Les Nabis, which included French painters such as Maurice Denis and Felix Valloton. In their bold immediacy and emphasis on flat, decorative patterns, Titus’s surfaces echo the style of graphic hyperrealism practiced by artists inspired by American advertising, such as Alex Katz