Alma Thomas (September 22, 1891 – February 24, 1978) was an African-American Expressionist painter and art educator. Do the trees near your house play music? Do the flowers in your neighborhood sing and dance? When Alma Thomas looked at her garden, she imagined that sometimes they did. |
"I got some watercolors and some crayons, and I began dabbling," she said. "Little dabs of color that spread out very free…that's how it all began. And every morning since then, the wind has given me new colors through the windowpanes."
Alma Thomas put these new colors and patterns into her paintings to show us the kinds of changes she enjoyed watching. Then, when she was finished, she gave her paintings special names, to tell us what they reminded her of and why they made her happy.