She grew up in Camden, New Jersey, against the backdrop of the Black Arts, Black Power, and Pan-Africanism movements. At age seventeen, she dropped out of high school to follow her then-girlfriend to Portland, Oregon. She finished her secondary education there and, following a formative encounter with photographs by Carrie Mae Weems, enrolled at the Pratt Institute. She initially worked only in painting and abstraction, largely inspired by Australian aboriginal art and French pointillism, but began to explore photography in one of her MFA courses at the Yale School of Art. She captured images not only of her mother but also of herself, investigating themes of presentation and perception that have since become central to her practice. She participated in the Studio Museum’s Artist-in-Residence program from 2002 to 2003, before finding greater national recognition in the 2010s.

Thomas’s representations of Black queer women play on and oppose approaches used by European “old masters.” She often uses rhinestones, which, she says, offer a different use of light from that of Caravaggio or Edward Hopper. While she considers herself a painter, her painted works play with an illusion of collage, bringing together disparate elements that, from afar, look distinct and layered but which all occupy one painted plane. She presents her subjects in lush domestic interiors. They stare directly at the viewer with a sense of self-assuredness. Expressions of pleasure recur throughout her practice, as she centers Black queer femme desire and subjectivity as foundational, rather than rare. She has also incorporated imagery from archival materials, such as Jet magazine and Nus Exotique, into her work.

Thomas received her BFA from the Pratt Institute and MFA from the Yale School of Art. She received numerous awards, including the Anonymous Was A Woman Award (2013); Visionary Award, Pioneer Works (2019); and Rema Hort Mann Foundation 25th Anniversary Honoree (2022). The Studio Museum has presented her work in exhibitions including Frequency (2005); The Bearden Project (2012); and Speaking of People: Ebony, Jet, and Contemporary Art (2014).