(“Sovereign Portrait features Alma Thomas with silver hair, surrounded by vibrant, rhythmic dabs of color—her signature “Alma’s Stripes”—with the Sovereign Eye watching over a garden of abstract light.)
Written by Dennis Harvell
Alma Thomas: The Artist of the Solar Wind
The Brilliance of the Wait
We often demand that greatness reveal itself in youth, but Alma Thomas lived a whole life before she showed the world her true colors. She spent thirty-five years as a dedicated public school teacher in Washington D.C., pouring her creative energy into her students. Her sovereignty was found in her patience; she waited until she was seventy-four years old to have her first major exhibition, proving that a masterpiece is never late—it arrives exactly when it is finished.
From the Red Clay to the Capital
Born in 1891 in Columbus, Georgia, Alma’s early life was colored by the red clay of the South and the looming shadows of racial violence. Her family moved to Washington D.C. in 1907 to seek safety and better education. Alma was a woman of “firsts”—she was the first graduate of Howard University’s fine arts program in 1924. Yet, for decades, her art was a private practice, a flame kept alive while she served her community as an educator.
The View from the Window
It wasn’t until she retired from teaching that Alma truly stepped into “The Room.” Suffering from debilitating arthritis, she sat in her kitchen and watched the way the light hit the hollyhocks in her garden and the way the wind moved through the trees. She began to paint not what she saw, but the energy of what she felt. She moved from representational art to bold, rhythmic abstractions that felt like the very pulse of the earth.
Space and Spirit
In 1972, at the age of 80, Alma Thomas became the first Black woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her work was inspired by the moon landing and the “Solar Wind,” bridging the gap between the garden in her backyard and the vastness of the cosmos. She didn’t paint the struggle; she painted the triumph of light, asserting that a Black woman’s sovereignty could be found in the beauty of the universal.
Sovereignty is the refusal to let your circumstances dim your palette. It is the courage to wait for your own season to bloom, knowing that when you do, you will outshine the sun.”
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