Pond - Spring Awakening

After retiring from her career as an art teacher in 1960, Thomas devoted herself fulltime to making art. Her abstractions, which focus on color and light, are frequently inspired by, and named after, experiences of viewing nature. In the early 1970s, Thomas began to limit the number of colors in her paintings, focusing on color harmonies and contrasts. Here, vivid patches of color peek out through a screen of gray brushstrokes. In 1972, the year she made this painting, Thomas was the first African American woman to have a solo exhibition at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art.