Brooklyn-based artist Mickalene Thomas is best known for her elaborate paintings, often embellished with rhinestones, enamel, and colorful acrylics. Thomas introduces a complex depiction of black female beauty and sexual identity, while expanding definitions of femininity and power. Often, the artist depicts African American female figures in settings inspired by her 1970s childhood. Thomas’s work is informed by classical genres of portraiture and the female nude, landscape, and still life.

Born in Camden, New Jersey in 1971, Mickalene Thomas received her BFA from Pratt Institute in 2000, and her MFA from Yale University in 2002. She currently lives and works in New York. Thomas was an artist in residence at Yale/Norfolk and The Studio Museum in Harlem as well at The Versailles Foundation Munn Artists Program in Giverny, France in 2011. In September 2012, Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe debuted at the Brooklyn Museum, representing the artist’s first solo museum exhibition.

faux real is Mickalene Thomas’s first mural-sized artwork outside of New York, and the third installation for the Norton Museum lobby. The work represents Thomas’s continuing
exploration of fractured perspectives and deconstructed photographic images. The mural’s imposing scale and images that recall the Florida environment afford the viewer an opportunity to “stand in front of it and be consumed and have this exciting visceral experience.”


Ashley Ford is currently the Leonard and Sophie Davis Curatorial Fellow at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. She holds a Master of Fine Art from the University of Miami, as well as bachelor ’s degrees with honors in Fine Art and Psychology.