Alma Thomas Opens Up Our Crowns
The cornrows of Thomas’s paintings, often inspired by her own garden, evoke the infinitely diverse ears of native corn and the sisterhood of braiders across the diaspora.
Alma Thomas, the first graduate of the art department where she studied, opened up new possibilities in visual art through her vibrant color fields. Richard Powell, a renowned theorist of visual art in the Black diaspora, praised Thomas's work in 1975 praising her choice to "forgo the unreal objectiveness of details and detached photographic realism and dive into what we see and feel."
Powell noted that Thomas moved away from the "mundanity" of impressionism, instead "cornrowing and parboiling it," placing "growing colors in it the way one plants vegetables and fruit in a backyard."
Powell's choice of words, referencing both cornfields and the hairstyle of the same name, brings to light the connections between Thomas's art and her roots in the tangible arts of clothing and feeding people. Cornrows, a beloved and infamous hairstyle of African diasporic origin, have also been criminalized under post-emancipation racist labor codes. In his review, Powell uplifts the brightness and nourishment in Thomas's paintings, believing that engagement with her work offers liberation to viewers.
Alma Thomas's younger sister, John Maurice Thomas, also practiced the art of parting, styling, and threading hair, serving as archivist and curator of her sister's work and legacy. Thomas's art remains related to and different from generations of braiders, embodying the generative challenge of the closest simultaneous interfaces of similarity and difference, often referred to as "sistering".
Her bright brushstrokes and spaces between them open up our crowns, inviting us to experience a world enriched by her experimental approach.
Written by urgent.news from Hyperallergic's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
