Alma Thomas

 Alma Thomas was born in 1891 in Columbus, Georgia. Columbus is only about 80 miles from the Albany Museum of Art! In 1907, Alma and her family moved to a house in Washington, D.C. She was the oldest of four daughters to her parents, John and Amelia. Her father was a businessman and her mother was a dress designer.

Alma began showing an interest in art very early. When she was a child, she would sculpt puppets from local clay! Her childhood was full of education at home.  Although during this time her town prohibited black people in public libraries, her aunts, who were schoolteachers, often brought professors and traveling lecturers to the Thomas home, including Booker T. Washington. 

Alma Thomas was a very important abstract painter in the 1960s and '70s. She was the first African-American woman to have a solo art exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City in 1972!  Despite others' opinions about her gender and race, she was able to excel as an expressionist painter. She loved nature, and would transform nature into colorful, bright, abstract mosaics. 

Alma Thomas and her family longed for better opportunities in education, and they were concerned about the 1906 race riots in nearby Atlanta. This led to the family to move to Washington, D.C, in 1907. There they were offered more opportunity than in small-town Georgia.

Alma Thomas had a good education and was introduced to the possibility becoming an artist. She used her vast knowledge of math and science in her architectural drawings, and dreamed of becoming an architect. In 1913, she became a kindergarten teacher in Delaware for six years before going back to school.

n the 1920s, she attended and graduated from Howard University as the first graduate of Howard's fine art program.  In 1934, she earned her Master of Art Education degree from Columbia University. Rather than become an exhibiting artist, Alma Thomas continued to teach for the next 35 years! 

Alma Thomas continued to make art of her own, working in her kitchen and sometimes even working on her lap.  She began making representation art, but in the 1950s she grew in her confidence and knowledge, and begin working in the abstract style!
 
In the 1960s, Alma Thomas become known for her exuberant colors, and abstract shapes and patterns from the trees and flowers around her. When she turned 68 years old, she finally had her work in a public exhibit! Then, in 1972, Alma Thomas was the first African-American woman to be given a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

​She has been an amazing inspiration to artists of color and women artists across the world! 

Inspiration from http://www.albanymuseum.com/kids-staying-inspired/alma-woodsey-thomas