It is week twenty-two in our fifty week challenge and the prompt was Alma Woodsey Thomas. She was the first graduate from the Howard University Art program, and is known for a colorful style. This quote is one where she best expressed her love of color:
Through color I have sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness, rather than man’s inhumanity to man.
-AlmaW. Thomas
As I reviewed her body of work and thought about the barriers she must have battled, I wondered what she would have been like as a calligrapher. She enjoyed mosaic type strokes and composition, as well as whimsical topics. As I wrote out her words I gave my letters a little ‘Alma-ish’ flare and kept adding color. I had fun and I imagined she had fun when she worked, so for a few minutes we had fun together.
Compassion, camaraderie, and even courage are the words I thought about today. We never truly understand what someone else has experienced, even when we hear their stories and words. We may think we know, yet that is only a portion of what they must have directly felt along the way. When we listen to not just hear but to experience their tale, the power is there from which we can learn great things. Like how to focus on color and beauty and happiness instead of prejudice, stupidity and cruelty. Alma must have had all that horror and so much more, yet she chose to bring joy, love, and amazing colors to life instead of harboring darkness and pain. We could all use more of that attitude in our current world, a little Alma-ish flare to make each day worth living.
Go find your colorful joy today and leave that nasty, old reality at bay for another time. If Alma can do it we all can do it.
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