Mickalene Thomas Biography

Mickalene Thomas is a contemporary African-American visual artist best known as a painter of complex works using rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel. 

Thomas’s collage work is inspired by popular art histories and movements, including Impressionism, Cubism, Dada and the Harlem Renaissance. Her work draws from Western art history, pop art, and visual culture to examine ideas around femininity, beauty, race, sexuality, and gender.

Mickalene Thomas Age

She was born on January 28, 1971, Camden, New Jersey. She is 48 years old as of 2019.

Mickalene Thomas Education

Thomas received her BFA from Pratt Institute in 2000 and her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2002. Thomas participated in a residency program at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York from 2000 to 2003. She also participated in a residency in Giverny, France at the Versailles Foundation Munn Artists Program. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Mickalene Thomas Married

Mickalene was a married woman but her marriage failed as of now she is a divorced woman. Her ex-husband is Racquel Chevrolet. She has not disclosed any possible reasons for the break-up. Racquel Chevremont, an art collector and consultant and they both share the parenting of their only daughter.

Mickalene Thomas Art

During her early career, she found herself immersed in the growing culture of DIY artists and musicians, leading her to start her own body of work. Mickalene noted that when she became an artist, fashion was always “in the back of my mind” as a source of inspiration.

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. Thomas describes the encounter in this way: It was the first time I saw work by an African-American female artist that reflected myself and called upon a familiarity of family dynamics and sex and gender. Weems’ work not only played a role in Mickalene Thomas’ decision to switch studies and apply to Pratt Institute in New York but to use her experience and turn it into art.

Mickalene Thomas Paintings

• Les Trois Femmes Noires
• Portrait of Mnonja
• Portrait of Mnonja
• Something You Can Feel

Thomas is known for her elaborate mixed-media paintings composed of rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel that present a complex vision of what it means to be a woman and expands common definitions of beauty. Rhinestones serve as an added layer of meaning and a metaphor for artifice. Rhinestones accentuate specific elements of each painting, while subtly confronting our assumptions of what is feminine and what defines a woman, specifically black women.

Mickalene Thomas Exhibition

In her 2017 solo exhibition Mentors, Muses, and Celebrities” at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis Thomas created multi-media installations that centered black women in the narrative-arcs of their own stories. According to art critic Rikki Byrd Positioning black women, artists, actresses, characters, and her own family — as mentors and muses, and as heroic figures in a lineage of their own, Thomas overrides oppressive narratives.

Mickalene Thomas Net Worth

Her net worth is not revealed but its underreview.

Mickalene Thomas Book

• Origin of the universe
• Surface Value

Mickalene Thomas Film and Music

In addition to her paintings, the Brooklyn-based Thomas works in the mediums of photography, collage, printmaking, video art, sculpture, and installation art. Her works, in particular, the Odalisque series (2007), have been interpreted as investigating the artist-model relationship but from an updated perspective of female inter-subjectivity and same-sex desire.

She has restaged themes and symbolism with a long lineage in Western art in her references to the odalisque representation of women in exotic settings. She experimented with institutional images in FBI/Serial Portraits (2008), based on mug shots of African-American women.

Thomas has collaborated with musician Solange, creating the cover art for her 2013 EP True. The cover began as a portrait of Solange the artist herself commissioned. Thomas and Solange also collaborated on a trailer for the music video for the song Losing You.

Her short film Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman, created for her exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, is about Sandra Bush, her mother, and longtime muse. In it, Sandra talks about

Mickalene Thomas Awards

♦Mickalene Thomas has been awarded multiple prizes and grants, including the BOMB Magazine Honor (2015),
♦MoCADA Artistic Advocacy Award (2015),
♦AICA-USA Best Show in a Commercial Space Nationally,

♦First Place (2014), Anonymous Was A Woman Grant (2013),
♦Audience Award: Favorite Short, Second Annual Black Star Film Festival (2013), Brooklyn Museum Asher B.
♦Durand Award (2012), Timehri Award for Leadership in the Arts (2010), Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2009),

♦Pratt Institute Alumni Achievement Award (2009)
♦Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2007).

Mickalene Thomas Media Paintings

Thomas is known for her elaborate mixed-media paintings composed of rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel that present a “complex vision of what it means to be a woman and expands common definitions of beauty.”Rhinestones serve as an added layer of meaning and a metaphor for artifice. Rhinestones accentuate specific elements of each painting, while subtly confronting our assumptions of what is feminine and what defines a woman, specifically black women.

Thomas’s subjects are virtually always women of color; a means to portray and empower the women and celebrate their culture and beauty—sometimes by incorporating them into iconic Western paintings. As a member of, and inspired by, the Post-Black Art movement, Thomas’ work redefines perceptions of race, gender, and sexuality. Thomas blurs the distinction between object and subject, concrete and abstract, real and imaginary. Her subjects often look directly at the viewer, challenging the dominance of the male gaze in art.

This assertive portrayal indicates that the models are at ease in their own skin, thus challenging the stereotype of the silent and inferior woman objectified by the viewer’s gaze. In addition, seemingly insignificant decisions have the important effect of encouraging women of color to accept themselves as they are and not conform to a particular ideology of beauty imposed by society.