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[quote=Anonymous]Alma Thomas
Born Columbus, GA 1891-died Washington, DC 1978

[i]Alma Thomas was a teacher and artist who developed a powerful form of abstract painting late in life. From the mid-1960s, she produced brilliantly colored and richly patterned works intimately connected to the natural world.

Thomas was raised in a household that emphasized culture and learning. In 1907, her family moved to Washington, DC, in search of greater educational opportunities and relief from racial violence in the South. In 1924, Thomas became Howard University’s first fine arts graduate, encouraged by the art department’s founding professor, James V. Herring. She then began an esteemed thirty-five-year teaching career at Shaw Junior High School. In addition, Thomas earned an MA in arts education at Columbia University in 1934 and studied art at American University during the 1950s. A significant figure in Washington’s art world, Thomas was associated with the Little Paris Group of artists and Howard University’s Gallery of Art. She was also instrumental in the 1943 formation of the cutting-edge Barnett Aden Gallery, among the first Black-owned galleries in the United States.[/i]

She told the New York Times in 1977 that she had "never married a man but my art. What man would have ever appreciated what I was up to?" She wrote, "Once upon a time it was said, don't die having a "Miss" on your tombstone. I feel very proud of having maintain[ed] my Miss. I say that Miss stand[s] for all the Jackasses I missed in life."  She added, "A fine man is a delight, but for God sake don't get entangled with a Jackass."

https://americanart.si.edu/artist/alma-thomas-4778[/quote]

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