Composing Color Audio Descriptions and Transcripts

Four Audio Descriptions with Transcripts

• Introduction to the Audio Descriptions and Transcripts
• Section 1: Space and Sky
• Section 2: Earth and the Seasons
• Section 3: Music and Nature

Introduction to the Audio Transcripts 
Read by Nikté Lopez-Aleshire '26

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My name is Nikté Lopez-Aleshire and I wrote and recorded these audio descriptions for the exhibition, Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. I recently graduated from Smith in May of this year, 2026, and I was a studio art major and museums studies concentrator. I am passionate about accessibility and inclusion in the arts and museums spaces, so it was a pleasure to be a part of this project. Before composing these descriptions, I researched best practices for producing this resource and consulted professionals and community members throughout the project. Though I am still learning, I hope that it can be a welcoming and enriching resource for an important part of our community. I would also like to acknowledge the work prepared by Taylor Mobley, a beloved class of 2029 Smithie who passed away in April. Their extensive research on Thomas’ life and work as a STRIDE scholar in the Curatorial department has informed this project. Lucy Montgomery, SCMA’s Post-Baccalaureate Curatorial Assistant, will read the gallery text, written by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. 

SCMA welcomes your feedback on this audio description. You can email the museum at artmuseum@smith.edu or speak with any staff member.

Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas from the Smithsonian American Art Museum features 21 paintings organized into three thematic sections: Space, Earth and the Seasons, and Music and Nature. Walls divide the floor into three sections and informational texts introduce each theme. The introductory text is on the wall immediately to the right of the entrance doors and directly faces Section 1. Around the corner and opposite the entrance doors is Section 2, which has a change in wall color: a light, baby blue inspired by Thomas’ bedroom walls. Lastly, Section 3 returns to the same off white wall color as Section 1 and includes an alcove with interactive materials.
 

Introductory Exhibition Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery 

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Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas from the Smithsonian American Art Museum

In the mid-1960s, Alma Thomas created a painting style distinctly her own, characterized by the dazzling interplay of pattern and vibrant color. In her work, color can be symbolic and multisensory, evoking sound, motion, temperature, even scent. Her abiding source of inspiration was nature—whether seen through her kitchen window or from outer space. Thomas once stated, “Art could be anything. It could be behavior—as long as it’s beautiful.” During a politically charged time in American life, she maintained belief in the recuperative power of beauty and dedicated herself to its cultivation. 

Born in 1891 in Columbus, Georgia, Thomas moved to Washington, DC, with her family as a teenager. She was a vital figure in the art communities of Washington for decades. In 1924, she became Howard University’s first student to earn a degree in fine art. She went on to teach art in DC public schools for more than thirty years and served as vice-president of the Barnett Aden Gallery, one of the nation’s first racially integrated and Black-owned galleries. In 1972, at age eighty, Thomas achieved unprecedented recognition for an African American woman artist, presenting solo exhibitions at both the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
 
Composing Color draws on the extensive holdings of Thomas’s paintings at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Organized around the artist’s favored themes of Space, Earth, and Music, this presentation invites you to see the world through Alma Thomas’s eyes. 
 

Section 1: Space and Sky Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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Space and Sky

"I love the change, I love the new. I live well with technology. I paint earth and space."—Alma Thomas

Thomas was born at the end of the nineteenth century—as she liked to say, in the “horse and buggy days.” She had no desire to remain there. Consciously oriented toward the future, she embraced the technological and social changes of the twentieth century. Her artistic evolution from academic painting to abstraction reflected this forward-facing attitude—her belief in the need for “a new art representing a new era.” Thomas’s admiration for scientific and technological breakthroughs included NASA’s human spaceflight program. While some artists and intellectuals criticized the space race as a distraction from the Vietnam War and social injustice at home, Thomas was fascinated by the Apollo missions of 1968 to 1972. She created numerous paintings inspired by their televised events and the revelatory photographs of Earth taken from space. She imagined outer space as a place beyond human conflict, commenting, “I’d love to be on the moon to feel beauty, vastness, and purity. Nothing there that was destroyed by man, no war.”

Celestial Fantasy Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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Celestial Fantasy
1973
Acrylic on canvas 
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of the artist, 1980.36.11
 

Celestial Fantasy Audio Description
Read by Nikté Lopez-Aleshire '26

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Celestial Fantasy
1973
Acrylic on canvas
~5ft by 4.5ft, vertical

Thick, short, cerulean blue brushstrokes construct vertical lines that span the entire canvas, varying in width, length and distance from one another. Toward the left-hand side of the canvas, the blue strokes are thick enough to connect to one another’s sides, leaving only gaps of the mint green and coral orange background between the short side and allowing for the repetitions of negative space to compose their own lines in various directions: diagonal, chevron, and staircase. Moving toward the right, the blue lines expand and contract, alternating between fuzzy and sharp and creating a vibrational sensation. The negative space beneath becomes more dynamic and central to the composition. The variation in color increases as well, and we are introduced to more electric greens and yellows in addition to larger areas of coral. Some strokes of darker, transparent, yet vibrant green are laid over the cerulean blue, further bridging the background and foreground. The electric colors and vibrational quality of this work reads to me like the deep humming of an electric guitar.
 

The Eclipse Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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The Eclipse
1970
Acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1978.40.3

The Eclipse was the last work Thomas created as part of her “Space” series. It was inspired by the total solar eclipse that occurred on March 7, 1970, and was visible from across the Eastern United States, including Washington, DC.

In a total eclipse, the moon blocks the view of the sun from Earth, appearing like a hole in the sky and allowing the sun’s corona, usually masked by bright light, to become visible. With its dark blue core and radiating rings of color, Thomas’s painting captures this rare moment of celestial alignment, its off-center composition suggesting the progressive movement of the moon across the sky. 
 

The Eclipse Audio Description
Described by Nikté Lopez-Aleshire '26

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The Eclipse
1970
Acrylic on canvas
~5ft by 4ft, vertical

A dark blue circle, about twice the circumference of a basketball, sits toward the right-hand top corner of the canvas. Around it follow concentric rings of curved dotted lines that hug the shape of the circle, each one embracing the last until they eventually reach the edges of the canvas. Each ring around the circle consists of a different color: royal blue and sage green alternating in the first five rings, followed by a ring of sky blue, then two rings of eggplant purple, then several rings of dark orange, then lighter orange, and finally, more than a dozen yellow rings spanning across the remaining canvas space. As the central, dark blue circle is situated toward the upper right of the space, the outermost rings begin to cut off in the top right corner due to the boundaries of the canvas. The circular direction of the dotted lines and brushstrokes lends itself to the title, The Eclipse, and even evokes other astronomical subjects like the rings of Saturn.
 

Grey Night Phenomenon Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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Grey Night Phenomenon
1972
Acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Vincent Melzac, 1975.92.1
 

Antares Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery 

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Antares
1972
Acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of the artist, 1980.36.13

This densely patterned monochromatic canvas conjures the intensely hot surface of the star Antares. One of the brightest and most massive stars in the galaxy, Antares earned its name—meaning, in Greek, “rival of Mars”—due to its similar appearance to the red planet.
 

Gray Night Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery 

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Gray Night
1972
Acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1972.147
 

Snoopy Sees Earth Wrapped in Sunset Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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Snoopy Sees Earth Wrapped in Sunset
1970
Acrylic on canvas
Gift of the artist 
1978.40.4

In Snoopy Sees Earth Wrapped in Sunset, Thomas’s reverence for the beauty of living things expands to a planetary scale. Captivated by astronauts’ accounts of seeing Earth from outer space, Thomas portrayed our planet enlivened by the reflected light of the sun. 

“Snoopy” was the nickname for the Apollo 8 lunar module, a reference to the Peanuts comic strip character (who was also a NASA mascot) and the module’s job of flying around the moon to “snoop” for a promising landing site. Thomas would likely have seen the widely circulated photograph taken from “Snoopy” as it orbited the moon. Known as Earthrise, the image shows a partly illuminated, vibrant Earth as it rises above the surface of the moon.
 

Snoopy Sees Earth Wrapped in Sunset Audio Description. Described by Nikté Lopez-Aleshire '26

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Snoopy Sees Earth Wrapped in Sunset
1970
Acrylic on canvas
~4ft by 4ft

In this square painting, an imperfect circular figure of vibrant reds and oranges is surrounded by an orange background, reminiscent of a sunset and the warm embrace of its rays. The circular figure is centered in the square canvas and occupies most of the space, leaving just about two inches of space between the curves of the composition and the edge of the canvas on each side. The circle is composed of short, opaque brushstrokes that imply vertical lines. The left-hand two thirds of the circle are blood-red lines, followed by one singular vertical dotted line of lemon-yellow towards the right-hand side of the circle. This is followed by another singular line to the right, this time light orange. To the right of that, lines of a darker orange span about a foot wide, almost closing the circle. Three more short, dotted lines of light, creamy orange enclose the edge of the circle in a staircase format, interrupting some of the previous dark orange lines. Each dotted line in the circle is just barely separated by a white background, appearing to be the canvas primer or white paint underneath. In some areas, Thomas seemingly exaggerates these breaks between the brushstrokes by painting over the edges of the red, oranges, and yellow with more white paint. Some of the paints, either due to the nature of the pigment or stylistic choices by the artist, are more transparent than others, such as the oranges and yellow, allowing for graphite pencil marks underneath to show through. Despite this evidence of meticulous planning, Thomas did not stay within the boundaries she outlined for herself, nor did she choose to correct these imperfections. The dark orange background surrounding the circle was applied with thick, curved brush strokes hugging the perimeter of the circle. Though the background color is within the same warm color scheme as the circle, the direction of the lines contrasts the vertical lines within the circle. The combination of shape, color, brushstrokes, and titling is suggestive of the view of Earth from outer space as the rays of the sun engulf the scene.
 

Section 2: Earth and the Seasons Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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Earth and the Seasons

“The seasons, the flowers, the sea—all of nature—have become a permanent part of my paintings.”—Alma Thomas

Thomas’s art shows her love of living things—how they grow, change, and renew themselves. Her deep connection to nature was formed during her childhood in the South, where she spent time wandering her grandfather’s property, witnessing “gorgeous sunsets. . . lovely fowl, every kind of fowl. . . and the most unusual wildflowers.”

Transplanted to Washington, DC, Thomas became a connoisseur of the gardens of the city, admiring the plantings at Dumbarton Oaks, the National Arboretum, the United States Botanic Garden, and other parks. She was an avid gardener who cultivated crepe myrtle trees and lush flower beds in her backyard. The abstract colors, lines, and forms of her garden was visible from the window of her kitchen studio. “I don’t want to be isolated when I paint,” Thomas said, adding, “Here I can cook and always see the beautiful flowers.”

Thomas’s paintings reflect the shifting hues, sounds, and atmosphere of her surroundings across the seasons. They express the smell of fresh cut grass in spring, the warmth of sunny days, the fiery colors of fall, and the hush that follows a snowfall. 

Red Abstraction 1959 Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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Red Abstraction
1959
Oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1978.40.2
 

Red Abstraction 1960 Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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Red Abstraction
1960
Oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1978.40.1

Thomas began shifting from representation to abstraction in the late 1950s. She developed her signature style, using “stripes” of bright color, in the mid-1960s. Red Abstraction represents a moment in this evolution, before the artist moved into high-key color and acrylic paint. Rendered in oil paint, the painting testifies to Thomas’s persistent interest in the abstract forms and colors of nature. Its oranges and reds evoke the vibrant foliage of fall, while vertical swipes of black suggest the directional growth of trees.
 

Red Abstraction 1960 Audio Description
Described by Nikté Lopez-Aleshire '26

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Red Abstraction
1960
Oil on canvas
~3ft by 2.5 ft, vertical

Similar to Fall Begins, Red Abstraction(1960) primarily consists of reds and greens, this time with a creamy oil paint and a slightly less vibrant palette. The scene simultaneously evokes movement and serenity. Opaque layers of olive and sage green cover the background while bursts of abstract red and orange blocks occupy the foreground, concentrated toward the middle of the canvas. These consist of blood red, deep orange, coral, dusty rose, and yellow. While some of these color blocks read as their own distinct forms, others bleed into one another, amplified by the buttery quality of the oil paint. Although these arrangements are unidentifiable forms, the mostly vertical dark brown lines scattered throughout the composition and fall colors suggest tree branches, trunks, or roots. They dance above and around the reds and greens, sometimes splattering, creating dotted patterns and muddled edges. 
 

Untitled Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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Untitled
1966
Watercolor on paper
Loan from the collection of Sylvia and Byron Lewis Sr.

In addition to working with acrylic paint on canvas, Thomas developed and refined her unique style of abstraction using the loose, fluid medium of watercolor on paper. Here, she builds her signature “stripes” and dashes into discrete shapes, using rich blues and purples and bright reds and yellows. Watery light blue fills the spaces between these triangular and circular forms, creating a tension between compression and expansion.
 

Light Blue Nursery Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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Light Blue Nursery
1968
Acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1970.324

With its neatly ordered rows of brushstrokes, Light Blue Nursery evokes the appearance of colorful plants lined up at a nursery. The variation of touch and direction with which Thomas applied the strokes of paint creates a sense of flickering movement. She once said, “My paintings of nurseries and flower gardens have been inspired by the forms or color patterns seen from airplanes speeding through space.” 

Light Blue Nursery Audio Description
Described by Nikté Lopez-Aleshire '26

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Light Blue Nursery
1968
Acrylic on canvas
~4ft by just under 4ft. Vertical

This nearly square painting holds rows and rows of horizontal stripes composed of Thomas’ signature dotted lines, which she called “Alma’s stripes,” and here surrounds on all sides with a white background and white border. The dominating colors in this work are cerulean blue and crimson red. By repeating several rows of the same color, Thomas created thicker stripes of color in some areas. Other colors painted in singular rows include bright orange, olive green, eggplant purple, rosy pink, and lemon yellow. Every so often, there is a thin gap left between the rows that reads as its own positive white stripe and connects the border to the central composition. 
 

Fall Begins Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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Fall Begins
1976
Acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of the artist, 1980.36.1

Like many of Thomas’s paintings, Fall Begins suggests an experience of sensory immersion—it conveys not only the brilliant color of fall foliage, but also the movement and sound of branches and leaves dancing in the wind.
 

Fall Begins Audio Description
Described by Nikté Lopez-Aleshire '26

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Fall Begins
1976
Acrylic on canvas
Just over 4ft by 3.75ft, vertical

Inspired by fall leaves dancing in the wind, Thomas produces a scene of composed chaos by painting loosely with a limited palette of electric reds and greens. The underpainting is a deep, yet electric and slightly transparent emerald green. Layered in painterly clusters of brushtrokes that move in different directions, a vibrant red sits on top of the green, mimicking the movement and sound of leaves fluttering in the wind. The red is distributed evenly throughout the canvas. The painting is about 60% red and 40% green. Toward the bottom right quarter of the painting, a much lighter and opaque lime green interrupts the spaces where the emerald green would normally appear and sits between the red strokes and clusters. Despite the dynamic image, the physical texture of the paint is thin and sits flat on the canvas.
 

Snow Reflections on Pond  Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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Snow Reflections on Pond
1973
Acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of the artist, 1980.36.10
 

Spring Grass Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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Spring Grass
1973
Acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of the artist, 1980.36.12
 

Arboretum Presents White Dogwood  Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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Arboretum Presents White Dogwood
1972
Acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of the artist, 1980.36.6

Living in a region with four distinct seasons, Thomas was attuned to the progressive changes of color in her natural surroundings. Arboretum Presents White Dogwood was likely inspired by an early springtime visit to the US National Arboretum, a sprawling botanical garden in northeast Washington, DC.

Thomas did not paint outdoors, considering this to be an old-fashioned approach. She instead sought out sensory experiences she later translated into painting in her studio. She once explained that she went to the National Arboretum “not to paint but to get impressions. A friend of mine goes there and gets every leaf. I said I’d go crazy doing that. I told him, ‘Just go and look. It settles you, and then you don’t need to look at it anymore.’”

Arboretum Presents White Dogwood Audio Description
Described by Nikté Lopez-Aleshire '26

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Arboretum Presents White Dogwood
1972
Acrylic on canvas
Just over 6.5ft by 4.5ft, vertical

Instead of placing darker colors on a light background as she does in many of the other paintings in this exhibition, here, Thomas paints in white on top of a deep teal background. These short, vertical white strokes span across the entire canvas, leaving gaps of teal between them. The transparency of the white paint reveals some of the teal beneath. The composition, transparency, and colors are comparable to a worn, woven basket that allows cool water to seep through the cracks. In certain sections, the gaps between the white paint are larger, most notably in three thin vertical segments. The first is a few inches in from the left-hand side of the canvas. The second is nearly halfway down the canvas though remains slightly to the left, and the third and final section is almost a quarter of the way in from the right-hand side of the canvas. In these areas, the white lines are thicker in width and are broken into different geometric shapes. The larger segments of teal imply their own vertical lines and create the illusion that the background is part of the foreground. Although the title references white dogwood, for me, the white markmaking over dark paint suggests birch bark: thin white bark that peels back in slits to reveal a dark foundation.

Section 3: Music and Nature Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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Music and Nature

“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

Thomas loved music and often listened to the radio or played albums and mixtapes as she worked. Her selections were eclectic, ranging from rhythm and blues to the soundtrack for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Well-versed in the theory of how colors interact, she was attentive to the interconnections between musical and visual art—how, in each, compositional elements are put in sequence and contrast to create harmony, melody, balance, and rhythm. 

Thomas also spoke of music and nature as linked. In a 1966 letter to artist Gene Davis, she wrote, “Your paintings give not only the feeling of listening to an outstanding orchestra or symphony, but the joy of Nature’s World of Color.” Thomas often assigned titles to her own paintings that connect natural phenomena, like flowers or a sunset, with song. In her art, nature and music are treated as twin expressions of a fundamental life force or spirit. 

Some of the works in this gallery are among the artist’s last. 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 continuously adapted her methods to create and innovate until the end of her life. “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

Delightful Song by Red Dahlia Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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

Wind and Crepe Myrtle Concerto Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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

Wind and Crepe Myrtle Concerto Audio Description
Described by Nikté Lopez-Aleshire '26

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Wind and Crepe Myrtle Concerto
1973
Acrylic on canvas
Just under 3ft by 4.3ft, horizontal

In this painting, egg-sized, pink, abstract shapes are arranged closely together, distributed over a bright green background that only remains visible through their cracks between the pink. Thomas primarily utilized two distinct shades of pink here: A creamy, yet bright taffy and a deep magenta. The lighter pink occupies the majority of the canvas and the magenta is introduced in three vertical sections that read as uncontained stripes. One section touches the left-hand edge of the canvas, while another begins a few inches to the right of the last and the final third starts a few inches in from the right-hand edge. Although Thomas’ title references crepe myrtle, a plant known for its bright pink, explosive summer blossoms, her painted petal-like shapes resemble rose petals scattered over grass, evocative of a romantic rose-covered gesture. The green background transitions from electric lime, to a deep, nearly blue emerald and icy mint green, gradually fading into one another around the canvas. The vibrancy of each pink figure is perceived differently depending on the shade of green beneath it, creating the illusion of movement, just as flower petals flutter in the wind.

Morning in the Bowl of Night Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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Morning in the Bowl of Night
1973
Acrylic on canvas

Smith College Museum of Art, Purchased with the Hillyer-Tryon-Mather Fund; the Madeleine H. Russell, class of 1937, Fund; the Kathleen Compton Sherrerd, class of 1954, Acquisition Fund for American Art; and the Dorothy C. Miller, class of 1925, Fund, 2018.23

Much like in Elysian Fields, painted the same year, mosaic-like royal and navy blue shapes cover the surface of Morning in the Bowl of Night from edge to edge. Attesting to Thomas’s interest in Islamic art, the title refers to a verse attributed to the Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) as translated to English in 1859:

“Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight”
 

Elysian Fields Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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

Wedge-like forms dance down the surface of Elysian Fields, united by a single strong color. Working with a pared-down palette, Thomas created a rhythmic composition that seems to extend beyond the edges of the canvas.

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, composed in brilliant blue and bright white.
 

Elysian Fields and Morning in the Bowl of Night Audio Descriptions. Described by Nikté Lopez-Aleshire '26

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[Duo:]
Elysian fields
1973
Acrylic on canvas
~2.5 ft by 3.5 ft, horizontal

Morning in the Bowl of Night
1973
Acrylic on canvas
~2ft by 3ft, horizontal

Museum staff installed two mostly blue, horizontal paintings next to one another, a pairing which emphasizes their similarities in size and composition. Single-color, geometric shapes are distributed equally across the canvases, leaving small gaps in between and allowing the background color to peak through. In Elysian Fields, brilliant ultramarine blue shapes contrast sharply with the stark white background, like shards of broken blue china laid out on a flat surface. In Morning in the Bowl of Night, these sharp figures are slightly darker and sit against a light pink background. This slight contrast, however, does not disrupt the clear relationship between the two 1973 paintings.

Untitled (Music Series) Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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

Earlier in her career, Thomas used a straightedge or bands of elastic 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.
 

Untitled (Music Series) Audio Description
Described by Nikté Lopez-Aleshire '26

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Untitled (Music Series)
1978
Acrylic on canvas
~6ft by 4.3ft, vertical

Loyal to its series title, the strokes in this painting possess a strong musicality, charged by rhythmic clusters of curved and wedged, bright red shapes against a white background. The shapes, arranged in curved sequences to form swirls and circular illusions, are tightly packed toward the left-hand side of the canvas and disperse as they near the right, like explosions of undulating jazz melodies. The individual shapes and the collective forms they create when organized into sequences resemble intricate mosaic patterns.
 

Grassy Melodic Chant  Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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

White Roses Sing and Sing Wall Label Text
Read by Lucy Montgomery

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

White Roses Sing and Sing is non-representational yet strongly evocative of 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.” She also recalled that as a child exploring the outdoors she heard “singing [and] talking sounds in all things.”