In celebration of Black History Month, American Artist Alma Woodsy Thomas.
She is a rather recent "discovery" for me, but her clean colors-non mechanical process appeal to me. I feel connected on a personal level she retired the year I was born (1960) and died the year I graduated, she worked for years in education and was a lifelong learner.
Born 1891 in Georgia, her middle class family relocated to Washington D.C. in 1907 to escape the ever growing racial violence and provide better educational opportunities. In school she excelled in Math Science and enjoyed making miniatures.She entered Howard University at the age of 30 and was the University's first female to earn a B.S.in Fine Arts. 1924 she began teaching at Shaw Junior High School in D.C. She started a community arts program, a public art gallery , and promoted the work of black artists. During this time she joined "the Little Paris Group" of support artists and art scholars and continued her own art education at American University.
1960, at the age of 68 she retired from teaching and devoted herself full time to making art. Over the years her work had changed from figurative to abstract and her mature works are celebrations of color and light. She was a master of watercolor but her larger pieces were mostly acrylic. Inspired by nature and science she was energized by the US Space Program.
She often had to defend her work from criticism that she wasn't "black enough" because she wasn't offering a visual narrative. She believed creativity should be separate from gender or race. Thomas pushed back against labels that restricted her creativity and kept working.
In 1972 at 81 she was the first African-American Woman to have a solo show at Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC.
In 2015 her painting "Resurrection" ( 1966) was acquired to the White House collection and became the first art work by an African-American woman to hang in a public space.
