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National Museum of Women in the Arts

Abstracting the Natural World

Abstract painting composed of brightly colored, lozenge-shaped brushstrokes cascading vertically. It is as if the painting were collaged out of torn pieces of paper, with the white of the canvas showing through.
Collection-Focused Lesson
Grade Level
3 to 5
Subject Area
Visual Art Writing

Overview

Students will explore abstraction through the lens of artist Alma Woodsey Thomas. They will create a collage based on Thomas’s paintings and write a haiku inspired by the seasons and abstract artworks.

Instructional Objectives

Visual Arts

Students will:

  • Recognize and identify abstraction in a work of art.
  • Understand and verbalize feelings expressed through art.
  • Understand that working collaboratively builds community in the classroom.

Writing

Students will:

  • Understand that creative writing can help them make connections with art.
  • Recognize the formula for the classical structure of the haiku.
  • Understand that the haiku often focuses on nature or seasons.

Instructional Plan

Observe

Abstract painting composed of brightly colored, lozenge-shaped brushstrokes cascading vertically. It is as if the painting were collaged out of torn pieces of paper, with the white of the canvas showing through.
Alma Woodsey Thomas, Iris, Tulips, Jonquils, and Crocuses, 1969; Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 50 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay; © Estate of Alma Thomas (Courtesy of the Hart Family)/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Photo by Lee Stalsworth

Lead a discussion about Alma Woodsey Thomas’s Iris, Tulips, Jonquils, and Crocuses. Don’t share the title just yet.

  • Describe what you see when you look at Thomas’s painting.
  • What do you think about what you see?
  • What questions or wonderings do you have about what you see?

Then ask students these directed questions:

  • What do you think this abstract painting is about?
  • How many different colors do you see in this work? What does each color remind you of? What might the colors represent?
  • Which of the four seasons, winter, spring, summer, or autumn, do you think this work represents the most? What do you see that makes you say that?

Next, share the title of this work.

  • Now that you know the title of this work, what new thoughts do you have?
  • What new questions come to mind?

Compare

A close-up of a colorful abstract painting.
Joan Mitchell, Sale Neige (detail), 1980; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay; © Estate of Joan Mitchell; Photo by Lee Stalsworth
Densely layered, expressive brushwork in cream, white, and multiple shades of green cover a rectangular, horizontal canvas from edge to edge. Daubs and splashes of paint mingle with strokes resembling arcs, circles, ovals, and other curving forms to suggest movement and energy.
Lee Krasner, The Springs (detail), 1964; Oil on canvas, 43 x 66 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay; © Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Now compare with The Springs by Lee Krasner and Sale Neige by Joan Mitchell. Lead brief conversations about each work, drawing students’ attention to the artists’ color and mark-making choices.

During the course of each conversation, share the title of each work with the students.

How does knowing the title change your feelings about the work? Do you like it more or less? Why?

  • How does each work make you feel?
  • How does each artist represent nature?
  • What question would you ask each artist given the opportunity?

As a class, compare these two works side-by-side, discussing similarities and differences. Finally, take a vote, asking students which works they would most like in their room at home.

  • What do you like about the works you chose?
  • If you created your own style of expressing nature, what would it look like?

Express

Painting features vertical tile-shaped brushstrokes in various shades of red separated by horizontal white lines. Creating a rhythmic and mosaic-like pattern that resembles stitching, the white lines create stairsteps in the lower right corner, separating as they move towards the center.
Alma Woodsey Thomas, Orion, 1973; Acrylic on canvas, 59 3/4 x 54 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay; © Estate of Alma Thomas (Courtesy of the Hart Family)/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Photo by Lee Stalsworth

Use adjectives to describe what emotions you think the artist is trying to convey in this work. What might this artist be trying to tell us through this work?

  • What artistic process(es) do you think this artist used?
  • What ideas do you have regarding how this work was created? Regarding the artist’s color choice?

Next, ask students to think about how they are feeling about the current season (e.g., temperature, relative daylight, anticipated holidays/school breaks). If helpful, have students select an emotion emoji that expresses their current state.

  • I wonder how you would express your feelings or emotions through color choice and mark-making?
  • If you are sad, what colors represent sadness for you? If happy, what colors suggest joy?
  • What types of lines and shapes reflect excitement? Anticipation? Anxiety? Anger? Happiness?

About Alma Woodsey Thomas

A black-and-white photograph of an older adult woman wearing a dress with square patterns resembling a quilt. She smiles, surrounded by her paintings, holding one herself. The paintings feature different colored, thick, similarly shaped brushstrokes that create vertical stripes.
Photo by Ida Jervis; Alma Thomas papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Thomas was born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1891. As a child, she occasionally visited her grandfather on a farm in Alabama, where flowers were plentiful. It was there that she learned to love nature’s bounty. As an adult living in Washington, DC, Thomas drew inspiration from the view of her garden from her kitchen window. Her abstract paintings represent her own special way of seeing the many flowers nestled in her garden. She expressed her feelings about her garden with color and mark-making, specifically by creating shapes, patterns, and designs.

Artistic Process

Abstract painting composed of brightly colored, lozenge-shaped brushstrokes in vertical stripes of navy, purple, turqouise, yellow, orange and red. The overall effect is as if the painting was collaged out of torn pieces of paper, with the white of the canvas showing through.
Alma Woodsey Thomas, Iris, Tulips, Jonquils, and Crocuses (detail), 1969; Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 50 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay; © Estate of Alma Thomas (Courtesy of the Hart Family)/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Photo by Lee Stalsworth

Of her process, Thomas said, “I got some watercolors and some crayons, and I began dabbling—little dabs of color that spread out very free—that’s how it all began. And every morning since then, the wind has given me new colors through the windowpanes.”

Create: Collaborative Collage

Share Thomas’s story and quote with your students, explaining that she is the inspiration for their collaborative collage art project.

Supplies:

  • White craft paper, cut into 16-inch squares, one per student
  • Mark-making supplies of your choosing, e.g: colored pencils, oil pastels, markers, watercolors, and charcoal
  • Four large foam-core boards
  • Bright, colorful paper, cut into one-inch strips
  • Glue sticks
  • Scissors
  • Pencils
  • Rulers

Activity:

  1. First, divide students randomly into four seasonal groups by counting off 1 to 4, to form Team Spring, Team Summer, Team Autumn, and Team Winter. All number 1s will be Team Spring; number 2s will be Team Summer; number 3s will be Team Autumn; number 4s will be Team Winter.
  2. Next, each team will brainstorm, using a web graphic organizer, to discuss and list the likely characteristics associated with their assigned season. Each student will use this information to create a color and pattern sketch of their design, using oil pastels or colored pencils.
  3. Finally, once all the designs are completed, each group will convene to discuss their group’s individual designs, and collectively decide on one design for their seasonal group. As Thomas did, students will lightly sketch their design onto the large foam-core board.
  4. Show students close-up photographs of Thomas’s work to point out her meticulous sketches, evident by the parallel vertical pencil lines that guided her in the preciseness of her artistic process. Then, students will begin to glue the colored, rectangular paper pieces on top of their sketched design onto the foam board, carefully leaving a little white space around each shape, as did Thomas.

Reflect

Write a haiku poem, a traditional form of Japanese poetry whose subject is related to nature or seasons, about what your abstract collage portrays. Is it an extreme weather condition, or something else related to your season of choice? Title your haiku.

Vocabulary

Art Concepts

Review the comprehensive vocabulary list, which provides a consistent description of visual arts concepts and defines the meaning of the art terms.

View Related Vocabulary



Credits

Terry V. Thomas, visual art teacher, Seaton Elementary School, Washington, DC, Public Schools, in collaboration with Adrienne L. Gayoso, senior educator at NMWA, in conjunction with the exhibition Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today (October 13, 2017, to January 21, 2018).