Tyrese Haliburton’s Art Collection Starts With the Artists
Israel Solomon, Blake Lenoir and Indianapolis’s BUTTER: the documented purchases and artist relationships behind Tyrese Haliburton’s emerging collection.
Tyrese Haliburton is building an art collection with a local starting point and a wider field of vision. His documented purchases at Indianapolis’s BUTTER Fine Art Fair include paintings by Israel Solomon and work by Chicago artist Blake Lenoir.
After the Pacers’ run to the 2025 NBA Finals, Haliburton’s off-court interests carry a bigger spotlight. At BUTTER, the story is more personal: showing up, meeting the makers and choosing work to live with. The acquisitions point toward a taste built around people, place and the stories inside a painting.
What art has Tyrese Haliburton bought?
The first named acquisition in this story is Spades Game, a painting by Indianapolis artist Israel Solomon. Haliburton bought it at BUTTER in August 2024, according to an Indianapolis Star report that spoke with Solomon about the encounter.
A year later, he returned. The Indianapolis Business Journal documented his purchases of work by Solomon and Blake Lenoir at the fair’s 2025 edition. That repeat visit is the interesting part. It gives us a developing collecting habit, with a relationship to an artist carrying over from one edition to the next.
Speaking directly to BLACK ENTERPRISE at the 2025 fair, Haliburton said, “I prefer art with meaning.” He also described the importance of meeting artists and hearing their stories. The interview makes the motivation personal: a connection to the work and the people behind it.
Meet Israel Solomon, the painter behind Spades Game
Solomon’s practice is based in Indianapolis. His biography traces an early interest in cartoons, superheroes, Star Wars and sneakers through to painting and art education. He has worked with organisations including Gainbridge Fieldhouse, the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis and Major League Soccer, putting his images into places that reach audiences beyond a conventional gallery.
In his artist statement, Solomon explains how colour, shape, light and shadow guide the eye through his compositions. Personal stories sit at the centre of his recent work. Titles such as Mother’s Love, House Party No. 2 and Lemonade Stand give a sense of the everyday encounters that populate his broader practice. Those works are examples from his portfolio; the publicly named Haliburton acquisition is Spades Game.
The card table gives Spades Game an immediate point of recognition. Across Solomon’s broader practice, everyday scenes become occasions for colour, rhythm and personal memory. The titles sound familiar; the way he builds a picture gives those encounters their own visual identity.
Solomon explained to the Indianapolis Star that Spades Game belongs to his House Party series, which moves through activities happening in different rooms. The scene includes players and onlookers, with red hands in the foreground signalling a hot hand. Winning and losing coexist around one table. It is a competitive scene with its own social rules, jokes and shifting alliances—an easy point of entry for someone who spends his working life reading other people’s next move.
The subject opens a door; the painting still has to keep it open. A card game offers a compact stage where a glance or gesture can change the mood. Looking at a work like this means moving between the action and the people watching it. The pleasure lies in following several small encounters inside one image, then noticing how the artist has brought them together.
Israel Solomon / portfolio context
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Blake Lenoir brings another visual language
Chicago artist Blake D. Lenoir, also known as B. LEN, approaches people and environments through surrealism. BUTTER’s artist profile describes a practice concerned with the Black experience, generational cycles and social tensions, using symbolism and distortion to reconsider familiar situations.
Together, the two artists suggest a collection with room for different approaches to lived experience. Solomon organises personal memory through colour and shape. Lenoir pushes people and environments into a more surreal register. The connection lies in the stories beneath the surface.
Why BUTTER matters to the collection
BUTTER is organised by cultural advocacy agency GANGGANG and presents work by Black visual artists. Its model directs 100 percent of artwork-sale proceeds to the artists. Buying there connects the appeal of a painting to the conditions in which its maker can keep working.
There is a local dimension to Haliburton’s repeat visits. A player associated with Indianapolis is buying from its art scene, and the fair’s structure sends the proceeds to the makers. The relationship extends from representing a city on court to taking an interest in the culture being made there.
An emerging collection, with a visible starting point
There is no public inventory that establishes the full size or value of Haliburton’s collection. The evidence here is specific: Spades Game in 2024, further acquisitions from Solomon and Lenoir in 2025, and Haliburton’s own explanation of why meeting artists matters to him.
The repeated purchases are the strongest signal so far. Haliburton has returned to the fair and to Solomon’s work, while adding another artist to the mix. A collection develops through choices like these: particular works, particular encounters and a reason to come back.
Explore the Tyrese Haliburton collection guide ↗. The illustrated portfolio works above explain Solomon’s practice; they are not presented as Haliburton holdings.
