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stripes, walls and concentric circles with the white canvas background showing in chinks
between the beginnings and endings of the strokes, had something in common, I thought,
with Signac's Divisionism, a style in which the French artist laid his oblong touches of
color like bricks on a white background that asserted itself around the color touches and 
interacted with them. Referring to Seurat, Signac mentioned the principle he was later to
reduce to Divisionism: "...the methodical separation of elements-light, shade, local
color, and the interaction of color-as well as their proper balance and proportion."

"The methodical separation of elements," together with Miss Thomas' painterly impastos
and her avoidance of masking tape and the stain technique set her well apart from
common Washington traditions. Miss Thomas certainly drew some of her basic ideas from
Noland and Davis, but she also studied the work of Dorazio, Capogrossi, Nay and the 
French tachists.

In the course of changing her outlook Miss Thomas renewed her interest in color theory
(she had investigated it extensively earlier), paying particular attention to the recently 
translated theories of the Bauhaus master Johannes Itten (who in turn was influenced by 
the greatly underrated Stuttgart painter Adolf Holzel). Color sequence and contrast was 
Itten's main concern, as it was the older theorist's ("four steps up, four steps down") and
Miss Thomas has borne this precept in mind while modifying it with her own color
principles based upon musical composition ("base against treble," etc.).

As an example of straight color sequence, note Burst of Fall (1968), in which assemblages
of curving verticals run the spectrum gamut from left to right-green, pale blue, deep blue,
violet, color red, warm red, orange and yellow. But, as in all Miss Thomas' work, the color
is less sharp than that of the color wheel; it is softer and less insistent without for a 
moment losing its luminosity. In other paintings sudden notes of contrasting colors break
the spectrum sequence which, as I have indicated, Miss Thomas is at pains to mute and
modify to avoid obvious color readings.

While the Earth paintings can be enjoyed as pure color abstractions they also have 
reference to rows and circular banks of flowers. The richness and ambiguity of this
concept, which involves nature as a subject but departs entirely from its forms, is reflected
in the unusual character of the color. In these and subsequent works Miss Thomas does 
not use what I call "sensibility" color, that is, color tones derived from nature of from
nuances of feeling, but rather "non-sensibility" color, in which tonalities are sacrificed to
obtain brighter, tougher relationships that project a workman-like, extrovert attitude
towards life. Leger, Stuart Davis and Ellsworth Kelly, for example, are "non-sensibility"
colorists. In comparison the bulk of the color painters, including practically all of the
Washington group, are in the "sensibility" area.

Yet Miss Thomas is not entirely a "non-sensibility" colorist; she verges on the borderline.
Her work has the tonic impact characteristics of those kind of painter but her color is not
insistently bright and devoid of nuance. As in her Earth Series, which is nature and pure
abstraction at the same time, the artist's color has a breath of "sensibility" to go along with
the basic "non-sensibility."

Miss Thomas found a new theme when the astronauts succeeded in landing on the moon.
To her this was a momentous event in human history and well worth interpretation by a
painter. Unlike many of us who blocked out this achievement, minimizing it as a 
distraction from the Vietnam war, she saw it for what it was, a new dimension in human
experience and an open door to exploring our cosmography. In her own mind she was