Barbara Earl Thomas

Barbara Earl Thomas (born 1948) is an American visual artist, writer, and arts administrator based in Seattle.

Early life Thomas, a granddaughter of southern sharecroppers who migrated to the Pacific Northwest in the 1940s. Born in Seattle, WA in 1948, she is among the first generation in her family born outside of Texas and Louisiana. The artist recalls being surrounded by family members who constantly made things during her childhood. From the age of eight, she was constantly drawing and painting. She also copied images from newspapers and books, giving the results to her mother.

Education Thomas received her B.A. from the University of Washington in 1973. After studying at University of Grenoble in France in 1976, she returned to her undergraduate alma mater, completing her Master of Fine Arts degree in 1977.

The first in her family to attend college, Thomas began with a vague goal to become a "physical therapist," eventually realizing that a major in art was a possibility.

Career In addition to working as an artist, Thomas is a writer and arts administrator. Wanting to spend more time on her art, she stepped down from her full-time executive director job in January 2013.

Artwork Thomas works in many mediums, including egg tempera painting, glass, cut paper, linocut and woodblock prints, sculpture, and installation. Her work is intended to tell stories. She also sees the process of making artwork as creating order in the universe, or as she noted in 1990, as attempts to exert some control over chaos. Since the late 1990s, her characters, still important in her work, have been increasingly subsumed by landscape, sea, and sky.

Collections Thomas' work is in the permanent collections of the Seattle Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum, the Whatcom Museum She also created "The Story House" (2009), a public art commission at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington that is part of Washington's State Art Collection.

Books Storm Watch: The Art of Barbara Earl Thomas (published 1998 by University Washington Press) SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA: "Jacob Lawrence: Lines of Influence," 2017

Awards 1998 & 2000: The Seattle Arts Commissions award for new non-fiction 2013: Mayor's Arts Award, Seattle 2016: Washington State Governor's Arts & Heritage Award