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figure or identifiable object is apparent. For Thomas, the transition from reality to abstraction has been accomplished. During the 1957-58 academic session, Alma Thomas studied with Jacob Kainen, while Robert Gates was away on sabbatical leave. Dissatisfied with the caliber of student in his advanced class, Kainen taught for the fall semester only. A former curator of prints and drawing at the National Museum of American Art, and a leading expressionist painter, Kainen reports that: ...Behind her free, nonchalant handling is twenty years of discipline, beginning with solid still-life painting for some years at American university....For a semester around 1957 when I did a brief stint at the University and when she was beginning her darkly lyrical abstract style, Alma Thomas worked with me and we would discuss her work occasionally in the mid-1960s. ( 1972 catalogue/Corcoran) Blue and Brown Still Life, oil on fiberboard, 1958 and City Lights, oil on masonite, 1959, both reflect the "darkly lyrical abstract style" Kainen referenced. Thomas has, however, made quantum leaps from the Summerford Still Life of 1952 and the Still Life with Chrysanthemums of 1954 in Blue and Brown Still Life with large irregular shapes, dominating the canvas. A wine bottle and water pitcher (or coffee pot) on the far right corner, merge with the broad areas of color as a strong vertical presence. A more dramatic painting is City Lights, with its slashing brush strokes and pallet knife tracks which subscribes to the Abstract Expressionists tenets. Color swatches of varying sizes are restrained by bold dark lines. Yet those lines are allowed to function independently as they 21