Right now, if you walk toward the temporary exhibition galleries at the museum, you’ll see a large abstract painting and a case full of dirt. What’s that all about?
Howard Thomas made the painting “Little Grand Canyon Yellow” in 1964. Thomas was from Ohio but made his way to Athens to teach at the University of Georgia from 1945 to 1965. He recorded observations from his many travels in vivid sketchbooks, which are part of our permanent collection. He wrote, “I carry my sketchbook with me and draw from nature constantly. I am inspired by the many nature-ordered transformations which I come upon unexpectedly. I seek out visually satisfying experiences in nature and in art.”
So, what about the dirt? Thomas kept a “marvelous collection of tiny jars of earth samples, all meticulously labeled” in his “orderly” studio. He often used this earth in the creation of his own pigments. In this painting, Thomas included earth that he collected at Providence Canyon, commonly known to Georgians as “Little Grand Canyon,” a network of gorges caused by the erosion of soft, multicolored soils exposed by poor farming techniques in the early 1800s. The Little Grand Canyon, in Stewart County in southwest Georgia, is one of the state’s Seven Natural Wonders. If you get up close to the painting, you can even see a little sparkle in the pigments from the mineral content of the dirt.
Thomas made this painting in about 10 days, a pretty fast turnaround for him, and listened to Vivaldi’s “Concertos for Diverse Instruments” as he painted.