Barbara Earl Thomas

Barbara Earl Thomas is a Seattle-based visual artist with numerous national exhibits to her credit and an active art-making career that spans more than 30 years. A skilled painter who now builds tension-filled narratives through papercuts and prints, placing silhouetted figures in social and political landscapes, she pulls from mythology and history to create a contemporary visual narrative that challenges the stories we tell as Americans about who we are. Thomas is also known for her large-scale installations that use light as the animating force and invites her viewers to step inside her world of illuminated scenography. Thomas’s works are included in the collections of the Seattle, Tacoma and Portland Art Museums, Wichita Art Museum, Corning Museum of Glass, Kemper Art Museum, Chrysler Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Microsoft, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Washington State and Seattle City public collections. Thomas recently completed commissioned work at Yale University’s Hopper College where she is currently a Fellow.  Her major exhibitions include Geography of Innocence, Seattle Art Museum (November 2020 – November 2021), and Packaged Black, a collaboration with New York based artist Derrick Adams at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington (October 2021 – May 2022) and solo exhibits at the Claire Oliver Gallery, NY (November 2022), and Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk VA (February 2023).  In 2025 Thomas will celebrate a new public artwork installation in Nantes, France and new work in Kunsthal KadE, Amersfoort, Holland.

Ileya

By Adedayo Agarau June 17, 2025
With feathers in his throat, Baba Ngani Agba opens the morning. In that record, he and his apala band sing about kindreds.