Matthew Thomas: Enlightenment is a solo exhibition of works by Matthew Thomas at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles. The exhibition was conceived by Mar Hollingsworth, former Visual Arts Curator, and organized by Taylor Renee Aldridge, Visual Arts Curator.

The exhibition features a site-specific installation and selection of recent paintings that function as visual prayers meant to harmonize humanity and the universe.

For over five decades, Matthew Thomas has developed a career as an artist and art professor, first in Los Angeles, and since 2011 in rural Thailand. In the late 1960s, Thomas began researching Eastern religions and philosophies and later studied Buddhist Tantra, a system of spiritual practice and meditation that has profoundly impacted his life and art. Inspired by his practice of the Buddhist religion, his multimedia works are filled with complex patterns that express his progress toward enlightenment and provide a path for others to experience the same. His unique visual language of sacred geometric abstraction, which integrates a variety of symbolic shapes and colors, explores basic life principles and correlates with the five elements of earth, fire, water, wind, and sky.

The exhibition runs until August 7, 2022.