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Article: Alma Woodsey Thomas

Editor: Madelon Queenan

The following two sections were copied from the original article, I plan on editing these potions first. At the end of this sandbox, there is a list of other sections which I plan on adding to the article as well, or at least I will add relevant information relating to these headings.

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Personal life[edit]
Alma Thomas was born on September 22, 1891 in Columbus, Georgia as the oldest of four children to John Harris Thomas, a businessman, and Amelia Cantey Thomas, a dress designer.

''She was creative as a child, although her serious artistic career began much later in life. While growing up, Thomas displayed her artistic capabilities, and enjoyed making small pieces of artwork such as puppets, sculptures, and plates, mainly out of clay from the river behind her childhood home. She was given music lessons as well, and her mother played the violin. In school, she was known to excel at math, science, and architecture specifically interested her. ''

In 1907 when Alma was 16, her family moved from Columbus to the Logan Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C., relocating due to racial violence in Georgia and the benefits of the public school system of Washington. Although still segregated, the nation's capital was known to offer more opportunities for African-Americans than most other cities. She continued to express interest in being an architect, but the scarcity of women in that profession limited her. Thomas attended Armstrong Technical High School, where she took her first art classes. After graduating from high school in 1911, she studied kindergarten education at Miner Normal School until 1913. She served as a substitute teacher in Washington until 1914 when she obtained a permanent teaching position on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Two years later, in 1916, she started teaching kindergarten at the Thomas Garrett Settlement House in Wilmington, Delaware, staying there until 1923.

Her kindergarten teaching incorporated creative activities for the children, namely arts and crafts.

She taught at the Settlement Home in Delaware for six years, until she decided to pursue an education in the arts.

Education[edit]
Thomas entered Howard University in 1921, as a home economics student, and had initially wanted to become a costume designer. However, she switched her major after studying under art department founder James V. Herring, who advised her to become the University's first fine arts student.

Encouraged by Herring and another professor and prolific artist, Loïs Mailou Jones, she began to experiment with abstraction. This technique was avante-garde at the time, since abstract art had not yet become popular in the American mainstream. Thomas was incredibly active within the artistic community while at Howard, joining Lois Mailous Jones's artist community, "The Little Paris Group."

She earned her Bachelors of Science in Fine Arts in 1924 from Howard University; becoming the first graduate from the university Fine Arts program, and was also one of the first African American women to earn an art degree.

However, Thomas still planned on teaching until she retired,

and in 1924, she began teaching at Shaw Junior High School, where she remained until 1960. She taught alongside Malkia Roberts, and while at Shaw Junior High, she started a community arts program that encouraged student appreciation of fine art. The program supported marionette performances and the distribution of student designed holiday cards which were given to soldiers at the Tuskegee Veterans Administration Medical Center.

While teaching, Thomas was able to earn her Masters in Art Education from Columbia University in 1934, ''and this was achieved through consistent extracurricular work and visits to galleries and museums during her summers.  Thomas also enrolled in American University at the age of 59, where she studied Art History and painting under successful painter Jacob Kainen (along with Joe Summerford and Robert Gates ), from 1950 to 1960 .''

In 1958, she visited art centers in Western Europe on behalf of the Tyler School of Art. She retired in 1960 from teaching and dedicated herself to painting.

Legacy
''Although Thomas did not receive a monograph until 1998 when the Fort Wayne Museum decided to exhibit a retrospective on the artist, her lack of national attention does not accurately represent her legacy and influence on the realm of Visual Arts. Jacob Kainen, her teacher at Howard University throughout the 1950s, asserts that Thomas played a key role in the development of abstract painting throughout the mid 20th century. In the Fort Wayne Museum's retrospective on Thomas as an artist, Kainen remembers her as ". . . a small, slim woman whose elegance of dress and manner and unmistakable firmness of character made the matter of her size irrelevant." Kainen met Alma in 1943, when she was the vice-president of Howard University's art department, at an event at the Barnett Arden Gallery in Washington, D.C. Thomas was accompanied by prominent members of the D.C. art community, James V. Herring and Alonzo J. Aden. ''

Death:
Alma Thomas died on February 24, 1978 still living in the same house that her family moved into upon their arrival in Washington in 1906.[6][8]

Evolution of Artwork:
''Thomas's post-retirement artwork had a notable focus on color theory. Her work at the time resonated with that of Vasily Kandinsky (who was interested in the emotional capabilities of color) and of the Washington Color Field Painters, "something that endeared her to critics . . . but also raised questions about her 'blackness' at a time when younger African-American artists were producing works of racial protest." Unlike these painters, however, Thomas's work was more individualistic, as it was inspired by her creative imagination. "The use of color in my paintings is of paramount importance to me. Through color I have sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness in my painting rather than on man's inhumanity to man." Alma Thomas ''

''Thomas was known to work in her home studio (a small living room), creating her paintings by "propping the canvas on her lap and balancing it against the sofa." Her technique involved drawing faint pencil lines across the canvas to create shapes and patterns, and filling in the canvas with paint afterwards. Her pencil lines are obvious in many of her finished pieces, as Thomas did not erase them. She also did not use masking tape to outline the shapes in her paintings .''

''Her watercolor and oil paintings incorporated the use of (sometimes overlapping) colorful rectangles. This technique was used later on, in her pieces which explored colors found in trees, flowers, gardens, and other natural imagery. Her painting, 'Evening Glow,' was inspired in part by Thomas's interest in the colors of natural world: "The holly tree outside her living room intrigued Thomas with designs formed by its leaves against the window panes, and with patterns of light and shade cast on the floor and walls inside her home." '' She called her paintings 'Alma's Stripes,' as the overlapping shapes of paint created elongated rectangles, and was later inspired by space exploration and the cosmos (as in her 1972 painting, 'Mars Dust,' whose title alluded to news stories of a dust storm on Mars at the time ).

''Thomas's artistic style began as representation, then moved to an individualized abstract form, and towards the end of her life, "to a color-filled, impastoed geometric abstraction of tessellated brushstroke patterns." ''

Activism:
In 1963, she walked in the March on Washington with her friend Lillian Evans.[11]

Success and Patronage:
''Thomas Hess bought one of Thomas's paintings titled 'Red Rose Sonata,' and his family's foundation ended up giving the piece to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Joshua Taylor also purchased some of her work, and wrote the following in a letter addressed to Thomas, thanking her for a painting: "It's like having Spring well before its appointed date." ''

''After her show at the Whitney, Thomas's fame within the fine arts community immediately skyrocketed. Her newfound recognition was somewhat due to Robert Doty's vocal support of her, as he organized Thomas's Whitney show as part of a series of African American Artist exhibitions, intended to protest their lack of representation. Additionally, New York critics were impressed with Thomas's modern style, especially given the fact that she was nearly an 80-year-old woman at the time of her national debut. The New York Times reviewed her exhibit four times, calling her paintings "expert abstractachiste in style, faultless in their handling of color." ''

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Barbara Rose, Harold Rosenberg, and David Bourbon were all art critics and self-proclaimed fans of her artwork. Young artists such as Faith Ringgold viewed Thomas's artwork as a representing an older, more conservative generation, although others consider her work to be naturalistic and independent of a political consciousness or agenda.''

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"In contrast to the cool, intellectual, post-painterly abstraction of Washington Color Field Painters Gene Davis and Kenneth Noland, Thomas identified with the light coming through the holly tree in her front window and the brilliant colors of the formal flower beds in her backyard. . ." ''

'' Although she had arthritis towards the end of her life, she remained a successful painter and was invited to the White House in 1977 by U.S. president Jimmy Carter, due to her contributions to the visual art world. ''