Thomas Forsythia Print

Born in Columbus, Georgia, Alma Thomas moved with her family to Washington, DC, where more educational and employment opportunities were available for African Americans during the Jim Crow era of racial segregation and discrimination. For 35 years, Thomas taught at a junior high school in Washington before devoting herself to painting after her retirement in 1960. Thomas’s paintings are a response to the experimental techniques of Morris Louis and other members the Washington Color School, who created abstract, luminous compositions by staining raw canvases with thinned acrylic pigments. Forsythia and Pussy Willows Begin Spring, 1970 exemplifies Thomas’s signature style, as it contains dabs of vibrant colour in a succession of carefully placed columns to convey the beauty of her garden, which included bright yellow forsythia leaves and pussy willow catkins. The staccato marks of the artist’s brush mimic the linear stalks of these plants with buds dotting the branches. Breaking up these spots of colour is the canvas’s gesso ground, whose brightness evokes sunlight peeking through the abstracted leaves and flowers.

23.9 x 14.6cm (image only)
35.2 x 27.8 x 0.1cm (including white matting)
made in New Zealand

Unframed prints can be shipped both nationally and internationally, framed prints are only available to be shipped within Aotearoa, New Zealand.