03 · Washington, D.C. · mid-1960s onward
Washington Color School Abstraction
While Pop Art dominated New York headlines, a different conversation was happening in Washington: painters stripped color down to its purest form, letting hue and pattern carry the whole painting with no figure, no story, no visible gesture of the artist's hand. It was a quieter, more optical kind of radicalism — asking how much feeling color alone could hold.
Alma Thomas
1891–1978
Thomas spent 35 years teaching art in D.C. public schools before she began painting seriously — she was 69 when she retired to focus on it full time. She built her mature paintings from short, dabbed strokes of color, arranged in rings and stripes inspired by sunlight through the holly tree outside her window, and later by televised images of the Apollo moon missions. In 1972 she became the first Black woman to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum.
Look for
- short dabbed brushstrokes
- concentric rings or stripes
- luminous unmixed color
- patterns from nature or space
- no figure, color and rhythm alone
You've walked the cycle for 03.
Now take that language into the lab: pick your layers, roll the dials, and pull prompts in this style — always carrying Diaspora imagery.