Wind Dancing with Spring Flowers

Inscriptions

Signed and dated, lower right: A. W. Thomas / '69

Label

Alma Thomas spent her career painting in the Washington, DC, area, and was especially drawn to themes she found in the city’s parks and gardens. She based Wind Dancing with Spring Flowers on the bright spring plantings in one of the city’s circular gardens—reputed to be that of Dupont Circle. The scene is an imaginary bird’s-eye view of a garden based on concentric rings of flowers. The goal is not naturalism, however, but rather a visual response to experience.

Thomas’s canvas is dominated by clearly handmade marks, emphasizing a very human presence in the painting. In this she countered a prevalent 1960s impulse to remove the hand of the artist from the work of art—an outgrowth of Minimalism. Thomas relished the handmade mark, and her work is characterized by the near-obsessive repeated brushstrokes that comprise the shapes she creates. As in the work of her DC colleagues, color plays a dominant role in evoking her emotional responses to her subjects.

From the 2019 exhibition The Expanding Universe of Postwar Art, curated by John R. Stomberg Ph.D, Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director

I say everyone on earth should take note of the spring of the year coming back every year, blooming and gorgeous. --Alma Woodsey Thomas

Thomas based this painting on an imaginary bird’s-eye view looking down on a garden comprised of concentric rings of flowers—reputedly, Dupont Circle in Washington, DC. Thomas used clearly recognizable brushstrokes, emphasizing a very human presence in the painting. She relished the impact of her gestures as she painted, and her work is characterized by the near obsessive repeated brushstrokes that comprise the shapes she creates. Color plays a dominant role in evoking or sharing her emotional responses to her subjects.

From the 2023 exhibition The Painter's Hand: U.S. Abstraction since 1950, curated by John Stomberg, Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director

Almost choreographed in rhythm, concentric circles radiate out in vibrant hues. Each ring signals regularity and symmetry, yet look closely and you will see Alma Thomas’s hand in each irregular brushstroke. Inspired by the gardens of Dupont Circle in Washington, DC, Thomas wanted to paint beauty that held the viewer’s attention. An innovator of nonobjective art, she sought to infuse her work with meaning beyond racial and gender constraints. Describing the transformative impact that a painting can have on us, Thomas once scribbled on a piece of paper, “Love comes from looking.”

When I look out my window, I see the trees . . .
the way the wind tosses the branches . . .
and then I think of when I was a little girl in Georgia . . .
I lived on a hill . . .
I ran down the hill to play . . .
the brook was alive in the valley . . .
I heard singing, talking sounds in all things . . .
I would stretch out
and these sounds of my childhood affected me . . .
the wind would dance the leaves together
and make it dark . . .
then the light would come around . . .

—Alma Thomas
(From her statement in the exhibition Alma W. Thomas: Recent Paintings, 1975–76, at the Martha Jackson West Gallery, October 23–November 17, 1976)

From the 2024 exhibition Immersive Worlds: Real and Imagined, curated by Amelia Kahl, Barbara C. & Harvey P. Hood 1918 Senior Curator of Academic Programming and Neely McNulty, Hood Foundation Curator of Education

Course History

AAAS 67.5, GEOG 21.01, Black Consciousness and Black Feminisms, Abigail Neely, Winter 2019

AAAS 88.19, Contemporary African-American Artists, Michael Chaney, Summer 2021

Studio Art 25.01, Painting I, Daniele Genadry, Summer 2023

Philosophy 1.11, Art: True, Beautiful, Nasty, John Kulvicki, Summer 2023

Philosophy 1.11, Art: True, Beautiful, Nasty, John Kulvicki, Summer 2023

First Year Student Enrichment Program - Cultures, Identities and Belongings, Francine A'Ness, Summer 2023

Studio Art 15.04, Drawing I, Enrico Riley, Fall 2023

Studio Art 17.08, Digital Drawing, Karol Kawiaka, Fall 2023

Studio Art 25.01, Painting I, Jen Caine, Fall 2023

Writing 5.05, Image and Text, Becky Clark, Fall 2023

Writing 5.06, Image and Text, Becky Clark, Fall 2023

Exhibition History

Alma W. Thomas: Everything is Beautiful, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, July 9-October 3, 2021; The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, October 30, 2021-January 23, 2022; Frist Art Museum, Nashville, Tennesee, February 22-May 22, 2022; The Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia, July 1-September 25, 2022.

Immersive Worlds: Real and Imagined, Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, William B. Jaffe and Evelyn A. Jaffe Hall Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, July 13-December 15, 2024.

The Expanding Universe of Postwar Art, Northeast Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26-December 1, 2019.

The Painter's Hand: U.S. Abstraction since 1950, William B. Jaffe and Evelyn A. Jaffe-Hall Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 3-December 16, 2023.

Publication History

John R. Stomberg, The Hood Now: Art and Inquiry at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2019, p. 181, ill. plate no. 112.

Cover, Humanities: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Winter 2022, 43, no. 1

Seth Feman and John Frederick Walz, Alma W. Thomas: Everything is Beautiful, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2020,ill. cat. 135, p.287.

Provenance

The artist; Vincent Malzac (1914-1989), date unknown; Estate of Vincent Melzac, 1989; Connersmith, Washington, D.C., date unknown; sold to present collection, 2016.

This record is part of an active database that includes information from historic documentation that may not have been recently reviewed. Information may be inaccurate or incomplete. We also acknowledge some language and imagery may be offensive, violent, or discriminatory. These records reflect the institution’s history or the views of artists or scholars, past and present. Our collections research is ongoing.

We welcome questions, feedback, and suggestions for improvement. Please contact us at: Hood.Collections@dartmouth.edu

Subjects