Light Blue Nursery

Rows of small, individually dabbed squares march across the canvas in bands of blue, red, yellow, green, and white, each horizontal line repeating the sequence of color like a woven textile. The composition reads almost as a fabric pattern, built entirely from these stacked bands rather than any single large shape. Alma Thomas painted this work, titled Light Blue Nursery, in 1966 using acrylic on canvas, and it is held at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, having come to the museum as a gift from the artist herself. Thomas worked within the Color Field and Washington Color School traditions, bringing an abstract expressionist sensibility to her patterned surfaces. Looking closely, the small squares never quite align into a rigid grid, so the bands seem to shimmer slightly as the eye moves across them.