Barbara Earl Thomas

Barbara Earl Thomas is an artist, writer, and arts administrator. She studied painting with Jacob Lawrence at the University of Washington, earning both her B.A. and M.F.A. degrees. She has gone on to a distinguished artistic career as a painter and printmaker and recently has begun creating large scale public artworks for King County (WA), Multnomah County (OR) and Yale University. Thomas was a Neddy Artist Fellow in 2006 and has exhibited work at the Seattle Art Museum, Whatcom Museum of History and Art in Bellingham, and Tacoma Art Museum along with numerous other museums nationally. In 2016 she won the Governor’s Arts and Heritage Award, the Stranger Genius Award in Art, and The Irving and Yvonne Twining Humber Award from Artist Trust.

Thomas served as Executive Director of the Northwest African American Museum, Seattle from 2008 to 2013. She also is a reader and writer who has published essays on a variety of topics and monographs on artists such as Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence, Joe Feddersen, Cappy Thompson, Alan Rohan Crite and Julie Speidel.

For additional information and artworks visit the artist’s website: https://barbaraearlthomas.com/

[accessed Jan. 2021]

[source: artist’s resume]