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i'm going to nominate this for GA, since the revscore indicates it. [1] i trust user:Annshafer, and User:Missvain have it in hand. Duckduckstop ( talk) 20:26, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
The following was a section added into the subject's article. While the quotes are lovely, it doesn't really fit into Wikipedia's manual of style for biographies. Please consider adding them to Wikiquote - https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Main_Page - our sister project! Please see the quotes below and also use Wikipedia:Quotations for reference. Thank you! Missvain ( talk) 16:59, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
In the sixties and seventies, she wrote her memories in a journal where she lays some of her views about art. [1]
"Art is inevitably the expression of external conditions, modified though they be by the genius and personality of the artist." [1]
"The making of a picture involves two processes: a taking in of the impression and giving out of it by the visible expression. (....) The degree of beauty in a picture depends upon the feeling for beauty in the artist and his power to express it." [1]
"The use of color in my paintings is of paramount importance to me. Through color I have sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness in my painting rather than on man's inhumanity to man.(...) My goal was not to offend the beauty in nature, but rather to share with others those aspects of it that have given me so much joy. " [1]
"Color is life, or a world without color appears to us as dead. Colors are the children of light, and light is their mother. Light (...) reveals to us the spirit and living soul of the world, through colors. The colors of the rainbow and the Northern Lights soothe and elevate the soul. The rainbow is accounted as a symbol of peace." [1]
"In my opinion Black art is a misnomer. There are black artists and they, like all others, draw from they experiences to produce artistic expressions. If this expression is non representational, it is difficult or not impossible to tell wether the artist is white or non white. There can be no doubt however of the impact traditional African art has had on the world of modern art." [1]
References
I did some fixes and will stop for now but here are some more things that could be done, esp if one has access to the cited books and articles. [Updating this list as I find more.]
Sullidav ( talk) 20:56, 6 December 2020 (UTC)
Also:
Sullidav ( talk) 05:00, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
So I delved into her online papers, and i feel like a little bit of an Alma Thomas expert, and I can correct the inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the article noted above even though I can't get the source cited by the inaccurate parts, but those edits need to be done based on sources and citations so may happen over time.
It also still needs significantly more organizing.
Other expansions I would like to do include bringing out the theme of the importance to her of education, which seems like one key to understanding her life - her parents moved from GA to DC, which was a step down in terms of class/salary/lifestyle for them, because of the educational opportunities for their daughters, Alma says she and (1 of? all of?) her sisters went to college so the goal of their move was realized, she was of course always an educator, and she was always educating herself at the same time - consistently through her teaching career she was doing advanced education at Columbia, American U, art educational travel to Europe, the Little Paris group, etc.
Another lifelong theme that could come out in this article is her inventiveness, creativity, making stuff - starting with her childbood dream of being an architect and sculpting with Georgia clay in her Columbus house, she was always creating and making stuff, not just art and paintings.
I would also like to make the point that she didn't find her signature style, for which she became famous - and paint what we now think of as Alma Thomas paintings, made up of those dabs of color - until she was about 65, several years after she had retired, around the time of her Howard show. Before that she was a prolific artist but doing sculpture (at Columbia), figurative painting, nudes, dark abstractions, other color stuff, etc.
Another theme that could be pulled out and is often discussed in writing about her is her joyous optimistic spirit despite all the bad in the world, which she was all too well aware of and lived every day - that was not what she wanted to paint.
Finally, another thing I would like to add is a Personal Life section, because here is a Wikipedia page without a soap opera, Warren Beatty "Personal Life" section - as far as I can tell, she was never married, had no kids, and lived in the same house nearly all the time from about age 15 to her death. With her sister for some or all of that time. Anyway, these are some thoughts I had after delving into her papers and other things about her life.
I may or may not try to edit this article along the above lines in the next days/months/years, but welcome reactions. In the meantime, I think we should rewrite the article's lead para. I will make that a separate topic. Sullidav ( talk) 12:54, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
Follow-up to reinforce the "optimistic" point above. From her typed autobiographical notes in her papers (at p4): "Through color I have sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness in my painting rather than on man's inhumanity to man." Sullidav ( talk) 15:21, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
Since this is a significant and visible change I will propose it here and not make any changes until I have waited for some reaction.
Alma Woodsey Thomas (September 22, 1891 – February 24, 1978) was an African-American Expressionist painter and art educator best known for her colorful abstract paintings. She lived and worked primarily in Washington, D.C., and The Washington Post described her as a force in the Washington Color School. The Wall Street Journal described her in 2016 as a previously "underappreciated artist" who is more recently recognized for her "exuberant" works, noteworthy for their pattern, rhythm and color. Thomas remains an influence to young and old as she was a cornerstone for the Fine Arts at Howard University, started a successful art career later in her life, and took major strides during times of segregation as an African-American female artist. Thomas believed that creativity should be independent of gender or race, creating works with a focus on accidental beauty and the abstraction of color.
My issues with this, in terms of Wikipedia style & content:
Alma Woodsey Thomas (September 22, 1891 – February 24, 1978), who is now recognized as a major American painter of the 20th century, was an African-American artist and teacher who lived and worked in Washington, D.C. She is best known for the "exuberant," colorful, abstract paintings that she created after her retirement from a 38-year career teaching art at Washington's Shaw Junior High School. Thomas, who is considered a member of the Washington Color School of artists, was the first graduate of Howard University's Art department, and maintained connections to that University through her life. She notably achieved success as an African-American female artist despite the segregation and prejudice of her times. Thomas's reputation has continued to grow since her death; her paintings are prominently displayed in important museums and collections, one has sold for over $2 million, and she has been the subject of several books and large-scale solo exhibitions.
So I would move down into the article body the Washington Post quote, the WSJ quote, and her thoughts about creativity.
Your reactions, comments & improvements are welcome below. Thanks. If there is not disagreement here after waiting a while (at least a week), I will make this change. Sullidav ( talk) 12:54, 9 December 2020 (UTC) updated Sullidav ( talk) 15:28, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
Yesterday (at timestamps 19:32 and 19:51) I changed two lines from the article despite those things being supported by sources, because the sources are wrong. I had put this explanation as a footnote, but now am moving it to the Talk page.
The edits:
1. Deletion, in the para about Thomas's Howard college education, of these sentences
2. Change of this sentence
to
Explanation:
The cite for the first sentence under #1 above and the sentence under #2 were both current and old, respectively, bios of Thomas on the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) website. This NMWA page says, "her Howard professors Loïs Mailou Jones and James V. Herring challenged her to experiment with abstraction," and a similar earlier version of the page, archived here, said "However, at Howard University, where she was the Art Department's first graduate in 1924, she became fascinated by abstraction, based on the influence of her professors Lois Mailou Jones and James V. Herring." These statements, which I found nowhere else in this form, have errors. First, the NMWA pages are incorrect to call Jones "her" (Thomas's) professor; Jones was fourteen years younger than Thomas and joined the Howard faculty in 1930, several years after Thomas had graduated in 1924, and Herring was initially the only professor, and later one of only two professors, in the Howard art department while Thomas was there. Second, other sources state that Thomas's change to a more abstract style apparently began in the 1950s, when she was taking advanced art classes at American University, not during her undergraduate years (1921-24).
So Jones and Herring were Howard professors and may have influenced Thomas's change (I left that part), but if so they did it well after her college years, and not as her professors but as her colleagues in Washington art circles -- they were connected through, among other things, the Little Paris group and the Barnett-Aden Gallery. And it's possible that she become "fascinated by" abstraction in college under Herring's tutelage, but did not change her style to abstraction then. Also, neither the cited source nor any other that I saw support the statement (from the article's sentence I changed) that she had "further education" at Howard, after her undergraduate years there.
Also I deleted the sentence about abstraction being avant-garde as tied to the first deleted sentence, it may have applied more to the 1920s to the 1950s, so not appropriate to the new version of the sentence, and I did not see it supported in the second cited source, though that is an entire book. Sullidav ( talk) 12:55, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
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The following Wikimedia Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 04:12, 31 August 2021 (UTC)