Mickalene Thomas was born on January 28,1971 and is a contemporary African-American visual artist best known as a painter of complex works using rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel.
24 Facts About Mickalene Thomas
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Mickalene Thomas was born on January 28,1971, in Camden, New Jersey.
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Mickalene Thomas exposed Mickalene and her brother to art by enrolling them in after-school programs at the Newark Museum, and the Henry Street Settlement in New York.
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Mickalene Thomas lived and attended school in Portland, Oregon, from the mid-1980s to the early '90s, studying pre-law and Theater Arts.
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Mickalene Thomas received her BFA from Pratt Institute in 2000 and her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2002.
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Mickalene Thomas participated in a residency program at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York from 2000 to 2003.
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Mickalene Thomas participated in a residency in Giverny, France at the Versailles Foundation Munn Artists Program.
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Mickalene Thomas noted that when she became an artist, fashion was always "in the back of my mind" as a source of inspiration.
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Mickalene Thomas was influenced by Jacob Lawrence, William H Johnson, and Romare Bearden Most influential to her was the work of Carrie Mae Weems, especially her Kitchen Table and Ain't Jokin series, which were part of a retrospective held at the Portland Art Museum in 1994.
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Mickalene Thomas has stated that Faith Ringgold provided an strong influencing in establishing Mickalene Thomas' path.
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Mickalene Thomas's subjects are often well-known women like Eartha Kitt, Whitney Houston, Oprah Winfrey, and Condoleezza Rice.
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The many years that Mickalene Thomas has spent studying art history, portrait painting, landscape painting, and still life has informed her work.
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Mickalene Thomas's work is distinctive in its foregrounding of queer identity; she is a queer woman of color representing women of color in a way that emphasizes their agency and erotic beauty.
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Mickalene Thomas has collaborated with the fashion house Dior on several occasions.
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Mickalene Thomas' work was included in the 2022 exhibition Women Painting Women at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
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Mickalene Thomas' piece portrays three black women adorned with rich colors, vintage patterned clothing, and radiant Afro-styled hair.
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Mickalene Thomas created the painting, her largest piece at the time, in 2010 after being commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to create a display piece for 53rd street window of the museum's restaurant The Modern.
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Mickalene Thomas then created a collage using the photograph as a base material and added other elements.
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Mickalene Thomas has stated that she chose the massive size of the painting to physically and symbolically "take up space" in spaces that were traditionally dominated by white male artists.
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The models who are the subjects of the original photograph are all friends of Mickalene Thomas which is common across many of her photographs.
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Mickalene Thomas has collaborated with musician Solange, creating the cover art for her 2013 EP True.
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In 2020, Mickalene Thomas designed a version of Dior's signature 1947 bar jacket for a cruise collection show held in Marrakech.
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For Dior's haute couture show at the Musee Rodin in January 2023, the brand's creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri commissioned Mickalene Thomas to create the stage design that served as the show's backdrop.
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Mickalene Thomas has held residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison, Maine ; Versailles Foundation Munn Artists Program, Giverny, France ; Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass, Colorado ; Studio Museum in Harlem ; Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont ; and Yale Norfolk Summer of Music and Art, Norfolk, Connecticut.