Alma Thomas | Resurrection
05/23/22 • 36 min
5 Listeners
While Alma Thomas worked for decades as a teacher, but she continued pursuing her art. She took classes at American University in Washington. She showed her work in group exhibitions with other African American artists. While she obviously experienced some setbacks as a black woman, her work was not taking on feminist or racial themes. Her early works in the 1950s were generally academic, realistic works and while they were fine, they didn’t stand out too much. During this period though, as she was studying at American Universtiy she became more interested in color and abstraction.
In 1966 Howard University offered to put on a retrospective show of her work. She was actually considering giving up painting due to arthritis pain but with that tremendous opportunity, she wanted to produce something new. She looked out her window and was struck by the color. She watched the sunlight shift the colors on the trees and the flowers in her garden and she began working in a more expressionistic, abstract style.
Ultimately, she is best known for her abstract works. Her style is characterized by mosaic like splashes of color somewhat like the impressionists, but also borrowing a bit from color field painters.
I think one of the most inspiring bits is she rose to prominence as an artist after three decades teaching (she taught junior high for 35 years). She continued pursuing her passion and demonstrated it is never too late to learn, grow and develop your talents.
In an interview in 1970, she said, “Creative art is for all time and is therefore independent of time. It is of all ages, of every land, and if by this we mean the creative spirit in man which produces a picture or a statue is common to the whole civilized world, independent of age, race and nationality; the statement may stand unchallenged.”
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While Alma Thomas worked for decades as a teacher, but she continued pursuing her art. She took classes at American University in Washington. She showed her work in group exhibitions with other African American artists. While she obviously experienced some setbacks as a black woman, her work was not taking on feminist or racial themes. Her early works in the 1950s were generally academic, realistic works and while they were fine, they didn’t stand out too much. During this period though, as she was studying at American Universtiy she became more interested in color and abstraction.
In 1966 Howard University offered to put on a retrospective show of her work. She was actually considering giving up painting due to arthritis pain but with that tremendous opportunity, she wanted to produce something new. She looked out her window and was struck by the color. She watched the sunlight shift the colors on the trees and the flowers in her garden and she began working in a more expressionistic, abstract style.
Ultimately, she is best known for her abstract works. Her style is characterized by mosaic like splashes of color somewhat like the impressionists, but also borrowing a bit from color field painters.
I think one of the most inspiring bits is she rose to prominence as an artist after three decades teaching (she taught junior high for 35 years). She continued pursuing her passion and demonstrated it is never too late to learn, grow and develop your talents.
In an interview in 1970, she said, “Creative art is for all time and is therefore independent of time. It is of all ages, of every land, and if by this we mean the creative spirit in man which produces a picture or a statue is common to the whole civilized world, independent of age, race and nationality; the statement may stand unchallenged.”
Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast.
Connect with me:
Website | Twitter | Instagram | Tiktok
Support the show:
Merch from TeePublic | Buy me a coffee
As always you can find images of the work being discussed at www.WhoARTedPodcast.com and of course, please leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. You might hear it read out on the show.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Previous Episode
The Mysterious Mona Lisa
1 RecommendationsLeonardo da Vinci’s painting of The Mona Lisa, also called La Gioconda has captured society’s collective imagination. Her hold on the audience is so intense there is a widely known phenomenon called, The Mona Lisa Effect referring to the experience of feeling like the subject of an image is looking directly at the viewer no matter where one is standing in the room. Simply put, people feel like Mona Lisa is staring at them and her eyes follow them around the room. According to scientists at Bielefeld Unversity in Germany, La Gioconda does not look directly at the viewer. Her gaze is said to be about 15 degrees to the right looking at the viewer’s ear or over their shoulder. They concluded that ironically, The Mona Lisa does not demonstrate the Mona Lisa effect.
Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast.
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As always you can find images of the work being discussed at www.WhoARTedPodcast.com and of course, please leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. You might hear it read out on the show.
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Next Episode
The Aztec Sun Stone
2 RecommendationsThe Sun Stone is probably the first bit of Aztec art I became familiar with even before I studied art. It has been widely represented in various forms of culture from the relatively recent Mexican folk art tradition of Amate paintings to pop culture such as Legends of the Hidden Temple which I must confess was one of my favorite Nickelodeon game shows in the 90s. On its face, we see a beautiful image full of symbols laid out in radial symmetry that is just so visually satisfying, But as we look a little closer and get to know the symbols, this stone image is a lot deeper and heavier than I realized.
The Aztec Sun Stone is also often referred to as the Calendar Stone, but it wasn’t intended to function in the way we use calendars today. The image is a representation of Aztec mythology describing five consecutive worlds of the sun all carved into the elaborate radial stone glyph. While the calendar stone was not used to mark the passing of days and months, it does have a date represented at the top. 13 Reed represents the start of the fifth and final sun, as well as the year that Itzcoatl began his rule thus legitimizing his rule with a link between the divine and man in the year 1427CE
When the Sun Stone was discovered, it was flipped upside down. It is believed that the Aztecs may have flipped it upside down in order to prevent the final cataclysm, the fall of the fifth sun. Flipping the stone would have been no easy feat considering it is about 3 and a half meters wide, almost a meter thick and weighs in at 25 tons although I suppose people will do whatever they can to fend off the end of the world. Now putting this into a historical context, remember that this stone was created in the 15th century and the late 15th century is when Columbus and other European explorers began to make contact with the Americas. About 100 years after The Sun Stone was created, the Spanish conquistadors did effectively end the Aztec civilization so their apocalyptic notion of the 5th sun being the final really wasn’t so far off. While the sun didn’t fall to the earth, it was the end of their era.
Who ARTed is an Airwave Media Podcast.
Connect with me:
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Merch from TeePublic | Buy me a coffee
As always you can find images of the work being discussed at www.WhoARTedPodcast.com and of course, please leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. You might hear it read out on the show.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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