Skip to main contentProvenanceThe artist
Lehmann Maupin
Terra Foundation for American Art and Spelman College Museum of Fine Art Co-Acquisition, 2023
Exhibition HistoryPublished References
Calida Rawles
(American, born 1975)
Thy Name We Praise
2023
Acrylic on canvas
72 x 108 in. (182.9 x 274.3 cm)
Credit LineTerra Foundation for American Art and Spelman College Museum of Fine Art co-acquisition in honor of Mary Schmidt Campbell, Ph.D., 10th President of Spelman College
Object numberTCA2023.3
CopyrightPhoto courtesy of Lehmann Maupin Gallery
Interpretation
Against a cool blue body of water, with light pouring in from above to create a web of dancing light below, a Black woman, her face just breaking the surface, floats gently in the supportive water. Her arms are open, palms face upward, and her white dress billows and creases in response to the movement of the water.
Rawles studied painting at Spelman College and New York University, and worked as a graphic designer, illustrator, and author while selling her paintings out of her Los Angeles studio. In 2013, Rawles learned how to swim, an activity that her parents and grandparents either did not learn or did not engage in, due to the history in the US of segregationist laws that barred Black Americans from public pools and beaches. As an avid reader, Rawles also went further back into history, reading about the Middle Passage, the transatlantic route that carried enslaved people from Africa to the Western Hemisphere, and water memory theory—the idea that as a body of water flows, it carries traces of anything that was placed into it. These personal histories and experiences with water influenced the series of paintings for which Rawles is best known, showing figures underwater dressed in white. Thy Name We Praise is intended to be the last work in this series, as Rawles is now considering new directions and subjects in her work.
The painting, a co-acquisition of the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Spelman College Museum of Art, was commissioned by the Spelman College Museum of Art in honor of its longtime director Mary Schmidt Campbell. The title is taken from the first line of “The Spelman Hymn,” the college’s song: “Spelman, thy name we praise / Standards and honor raise,” and the white dress refers to the white attire traditionally worn by Spelman students for official events on campus.
Rawles studied painting at Spelman College and New York University, and worked as a graphic designer, illustrator, and author while selling her paintings out of her Los Angeles studio. In 2013, Rawles learned how to swim, an activity that her parents and grandparents either did not learn or did not engage in, due to the history in the US of segregationist laws that barred Black Americans from public pools and beaches. As an avid reader, Rawles also went further back into history, reading about the Middle Passage, the transatlantic route that carried enslaved people from Africa to the Western Hemisphere, and water memory theory—the idea that as a body of water flows, it carries traces of anything that was placed into it. These personal histories and experiences with water influenced the series of paintings for which Rawles is best known, showing figures underwater dressed in white. Thy Name We Praise is intended to be the last work in this series, as Rawles is now considering new directions and subjects in her work.
The painting, a co-acquisition of the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Spelman College Museum of Art, was commissioned by the Spelman College Museum of Art in honor of its longtime director Mary Schmidt Campbell. The title is taken from the first line of “The Spelman Hymn,” the college’s song: “Spelman, thy name we praise / Standards and honor raise,” and the white dress refers to the white attire traditionally worn by Spelman students for official events on campus.
Lehmann Maupin
Terra Foundation for American Art and Spelman College Museum of Fine Art Co-Acquisition, 2023
Exhibition History
Black American Portraits. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (organizer). Venues: Spelman College Museum of Fine Arts, Atlanta, February 8-June 30, 2023; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, August 17-January 24, 2023. [exh. cat.]
Evans, Bryn. “Something Bigger Than You: In Conversation with Calida Rawles,” Burnaway (April 26, 2023).
There are no additional artworks by this artist in the collection.