The dog days of August deserve some summertime art and Alma Thomas's work, Snoopy Sees Earth Wrapped in Sunset, seems like a perfect fit. I am a strong advocate of titles because I enjoy the possibility of a title adding a range of poetic and imaginative interpretations to the work. Who, afterall, wouldn't like to imagine how Snoopy sees the earth? I also appreciate the title of Thomas's painting Late Night Reflections (image below) as "reflections" can be interpreted as both a tangible and intangible entity.



Alma Thomas lived from 1891-1978 and she managed to set a few precedents during this time. She attended Howard University in Washington, DC and in 1924 was the first student to earn a degree in Fine Art. And at 80 years old she was the first Afro-American woman to have a retrospective of her work at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

The joy of Thomas's work is while she was influenced by various styles such as the early abstraction of Kandinsky, and the Abstract Expressionism of Sam Francis, Larry Poons or Clyfford Still to name a few examples, she was an artist that consistently followed her own direction while paying close attention to her immediate surroundings. Her vibrant abstractions were inspired initially by studying the shape of holly leaves in her backyard garden and her work continued to be informed by plants throughout her artistic life.

Her work is currently being exhibited at The Studio Museum in Harlem and a comprehensive exhibition catalogue has been produced to accompany this exhibition: Alma Thomas (available November 2016). This is Thomas's first major retrospective in over 30 years. Peter Schjeldahl, in a recent New Yorker review entitled "Alma Thomas's Late Blooms", describes the exhibition in the following way: "a small but wondrous Alma Thomas retrospective at the Studio Museum in Harlem put me in mind of a desert plant that spends all year as an innocent cactus and then, in the middle of the night, blooms."

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has some fun exercises for kids (but they would be of interest to adults too!) based on Thomas's paintings. The Tang Museum website has a comprehensive page devoted to her work and a sidebar with related reviews and articles. Michael Rosenfeld was the main dealer of Thomas's work over the last 25 years and some good information can be found on his gallery website: Michael Rosenfeld Art. And there is a nice essay by Lauren Haynes in The Studio Museum in Harlem Magazine.

Through color, I have sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness, rather than on man's inhumanity to man.

- Alma Thomas, 1970