While touring the Baltimore Museum of Art one particular piece caught my immediate attention. The painting is entitled "Evening Glow" and was painted in 1972 by Alma Thomas, a renowned African American woman with a lifetime of achievement in painting and teaching art.
             Evening Glow was painted with acrylic paint on a poster-sized canvas. It's exact dimensions are 35 and 3/16 by 41 inches. Evening Glow is a painting of shimmering color, a bold field of blue animated by flashes of orange, red, yellow, and white. The colors of the painting are vibrant and the brushstrokes are indelicate. The essence of Evening Glow seem to reflect the world seen through young eyes, perhaps a blurred flash of memory. Evening Glow may also have been inspired by the dazzling reflections of a deep blue pond or quite possibly by the brilliant colors of an evening sky.
             The blue brushstrokes of Evening Glow are strong and proportionate throughout the piece. They are evenly spread across the painting which gives the painting obvious balance. In retrospect, this sense of balance leads to a rhythm within the painting. In the lower-center of the painting is a convincing hint of red surrounded with more subtle indications of orange, yellow, and white. The colors within the blue seem to fade lighter as they move towards the borders of the painting.
             The whole concept of color is immensely important in Evening Glow. Thomas's love of color and light, and her fascination with nature and it's constantly-changing patterns inspired to create paintings such as Evening Glow. In any case, it was the glowing color of nature that attracted Thomas's attention.
             Alma Thomas was born in 1891 and initially grew up in a large home atop a hill in Columbus, Georgia. Throughout her life Thomas remembered the green lawns and circular flower beds of her childhood home. It was said that her painting "The Eclipse," a series of different colored rings surrounding...