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browns and ochres are punctuated by a bright red square in the lower center and passages of white paint throughout the composition.. A study tour of Europe, sponsored by Tyler School of Fine Arts, Temple University, during the summer of 1958 1959, gave Thomas the necessary impetus to forge ahead with abstract compositions. A Wharf at Rotterdam, oil, 1959, as noted by one writer "...achieves its exploding de Kooning-like tensions with linear thrusts set against thick, scumbled white, cloudlike shapes and bright background colors."55 The years at American University and her travels abroad, no doubt visiting museums and galleries across Europe, bolstered the spirit and confidence of Alma Thomas who was beginning the envision herself as a serious painter with a purpose. Two years later, on January 31, 1960, she retired from teaching in the same classroom, after thirty five years, and concentrated exclusively on her artistry. Thomas's acquaintance with Kainen and artists of the Washington Color Field School, certainly was of great importance to her with regard to "their ideas in organizing geometrical compositions of pure color - but not at all by their techniques".56 As Kainen aptly explained: ... In that period artists were staining with acrylic. Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Gene Davis, and Sam Gilliam a little later. But Alma handled it like oil. She mixed it and put it on. She had what you call an attack, you know, it was a firm stroke. With stain, that would have meant she would have had to use masking tape because 25