Mickalene Thomas (b. 1971)

"The unabashed visual richness of these works attests to the power of the decorative while extending the tenets of Conceptual identity art into an unusually full-bodied form of painting. Enhanced by burning colors; outrageously tactile, rhinestone-studded surfaces; and fractured, almost Cubist perspectives, these images draw equally from 19th- and 20th-century French modernism, portrait painting, 1970s blaxploitation extravagance and an array of postwar pictorial styles...In all, Ms. Thomas's portraits, reclining odalisques and figure groups, and also her cacophonous landscapes and more sedate interiors cover many bases: aesthetic, political, art-historical and pop-cultural. Their sheer complexity makes them seem close to self-sufficient, secure in their ability to reach most viewers on one wavelength or another. They set the eye and brain whirring, parsing subversive meanings and quotations, skipping among mediums and savoring the contrasting surface textures, which include slatherings and smooth, enamel-like finishes and thin, brushy strokes...
Above all, these works convey a pride of person that gives any viewer - not only women - an occasion to rise to"
(R. Smith, "Loud, Proud and Painted," The New York Times, 27 September 2012).