“Man’s highest inspirations come
from nature. A world without color would seem dead. Color is life. Light is the
mother of color. Light reveals to us the spirit and the living soul of the
world through colors.” That was the philosophy of Alma
Thomas, the late Abstract Expressionist painter whose works will be on view at
the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in Chelsea in an exhibit titled Alma Thomas: Moving Heaven and Earth,
Paintings and Works on Paper, 1958—1978.
Alma W. Thomas was born in
Columbus, Georgia in 1891. When Thomas was a teenager, her family moved to
Washington D.C. to escape the racial violence that was prevalent in their
hometown. Thomas began studying at Howard University in 1921 where she earned
her BS in Fine Arts three years later. She then became an art teacher at Shaw
Junior High School where she founded a community art program to introduce her
students to the world of fine art. In 1958, two years before she retired from
teaching, Thomas began her career as an artist and had her first exhibition in
1966 at Howard University’s Gallery of Art, followed a few years later with
exhibitions at the Whitney Museum and Corcoran Gallery of Art. Thomas passed away in 1978 at age
86 and this exhibit at the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery includes more than 40 drawings
and paintings she did during the last 20 years of her life when she decided to
become a full-time artist.
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| "Oriental Sunset" (1973) |
Thomas’ works consist of rhythmic
patterns that are bursting with energy with their vibrant colors. She had an
appreciation for nature and her keen observations come through in all of her
works. For instance End of Autumn
depicts the Earth with a blue center representing the winter that will soon be
approaching as the typical red, yellow, and orange colors are pushed to the
side. Contrarily, Spring No. 1
features a group of bright colors on the right side starting to dominate and
push to the side cooler colors to mark the emergence of springtime.
Thomas also recognizes the
importance of yin and yang elements in two similar paintings that both feature
swift black paint strokes dancing across the canvas. One of them titled Fire Flies has hot colors like red to
represent yang, while the other titled Tales
of the Vienna Woods has cooler colors like blue to represent yin. Thomas has also done many paintings
of several different shapes clustered together on the canvas giving them the
appearance of a stained glass window. Such paintings include Jonquils, Oriental Sunset, Red Scarlet
Sage, Scarlet Sage, and Dancing a Whirling Dervish.
At the Michael Rosenfeld
Gallery, 100 Eleventh Ave., through May 16. The gallery is open Tues.—Sat.
from 10 a.m.—6 p.m.
