Music and Nature

Composing Color Exhibition Guide
Black and white photograph of Alma Thomas at worktable with artist’s tools, surrounded by her own art.

Frank Stewart, Alma Thomas, 1976. Columbus Museum of Art.

I would wade in the brook, and when it rained you could hear music. I would fall on the grass and look at the poplar trees, and the lovely yellow leaves would whistle.

– Alma Thomas

Alma Thomas loved music and often listened to the radio or played albums and mixtapes as she worked. She was attentive to how both music and visual art arrange compositional elements to create harmony, melody, balance, and rhythm. Thomas also spoke of music and nature as linked, often assigning her paintings titles that connect natural phenomena, like flowers or a sunset, with song. In her art, she treated nature and music as twinned expressions of a fundamental life force.

This gallery features some of Thomas’s last works. They are also among her boldest and freest. In the mid-1970s, Thomas moved beyond her signature stripes to create complex mosaic-like compositions using irregular shapes she described as her “hieroglyphs.” Facing declining physical ability, she continually adapted her methods to create and innovate until the end of her life.

Red mosaic-like shapes flowing through white background, dense on left, sparser toward right.

Untitled (Music Series)
1978
Acrylic paint on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum: Gift of the artist, 1978.40.5

Earlier in her career, Thomas used a straight edge or elastic bands to guide the striped format of her compositions. In this work, she painted more freely, creating patterns of wedges and glyphs that loosen from left to right, as if vibrating on the surface of a drum. Despite the health challenges she faced at this stage of her life, including being hospitalized for two months after breaking her hip in 1974, Thomas continued to create large paintings, sometimes physically propping herself up to do so.

Abstract, mosaic-like, painting with primarily white brushstrokes, and several yellow brushstrokes, on a green background.

White Roses Sing and Sing
1976
Acrylic paint on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum: Bequest of the artist, 1980.36.3

As a child, Thomas explored the outdoors and heard “singing [and] talking sounds in all things.” White Roses Sing and Sing evokes the artist’s experience of being in the natural world. Translucent pale forms float over a background of shifting green and yellow—a luminous image perhaps related to Thomas’s memories of her childhood home in Columbus, Georgia, in a neighborhood called Rose Hill. She once remarked that it “was rightly named because roses bloomed there almost the year round.”

Light and bright pink brushstrokes resembling small stones on golden-pearl background.

Wind and Crepe Myrtle Concerto
1973
Acrylic paint on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum: Gift of Vincent Melzac, 1975.92.2

Bright red small squares and rectangles on yellow-green background. The bright red pops against, giving the impression of fresh petals scattered amongst a lush green backdrop.

Delightful Song by Red Dahlia
1976
Acrylic paint on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum: Bequest of the artist, 1980.36.4

Ocean blue shapes resembling mosaic tiles on white background. At seven points in this painting, the shapes become smaller and curl in on themselves, creating the impression of swirls.

Grassy Melodic Chant
1976
Acrylic paint on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum: Bequest of the artist, 1980.36.5

Various blue shapes of different sizes and forms on a white background. The composition resembles blue mosaic tiles.

Elysian Fields
1973
Acrylic paint on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum: Bequest of the artist, 1980.36.8

In Greek mythology, the Elysian Fields are a utopian afterlife reserved for virtuous souls. Thomas evidently felt that the reference suited the clarity and purity of this painting, uniting its composition of wedge-like forms with an intense blue hue and bright white background.

Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Generous support has been provided by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Chris G. Harris, the Wolf Kahn Foundation, and Susan Talley.

Support for the presentation at the Denver Art Museum is provided by the Birnbaum Social Discourse Project, the donors to the Annual Fund Leadership Campaign, and the residents who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). Promotional support is provided by 5280 Magazine and CBS Colorado.