Sue Steele Thomas & Radford Thomas
i*8 Among the Palms © Sue Steele Thomas
Faces, Places, and Machines
ON DISPLAY
April 6 - May 28, 2026
RECEPTION
April 9 5:00-7:00
“Faces, Places, and Machines,” the latest exhibit at the Montgomery Museum of Art and History, showcases the work of husband-and-wife painters Sue Steele Thomas and Dr. Radford Thomas.
They have both had successful careers in teaching and painting and hold the title professor of art. This duo spent decades instilling the importance of the visual arts into their students. Both have exhibited in solo, invitational, and international exhibitions. Steele Thomas earned an MFA degree from Radford University, while Radford Thomas holds a Ph.D. from The University of Texas.
Faces: Radford Thomas has a passion for creating portraits that range from photo-realistic imagery to abstract rendition in his complex style of making marks and overlaying colors for blending. When viewed from a distance, the viewer’s eye mixes the colors of nearby dots, resulting in more intense and vibrant hues than those achieved by mixing paints on a palette. His portraits are done in oil, acrylic, and ink. The exhibit will showcase black and white portraits. Steele Thomas is currently painting subjects from nature, in gouache, opaque watercolor, which include crows, a blue jay, and a cardinal.
Places: These two painters are inspired from traveling and exhibiting, over the decades, from California, Florida, Maine to Texas, to mention a few. They packed up the van, named Van Gogh, and got out on the road again. Steele Thomas will exhibit a seascape with a lobster boat she created from traveling to Maine.
Radford Thomas will exhibit Cherry Tree Summer, an oil that displays its trunk and sky as your eyes connect the dots. Texas City Disaster (left) depicts the aftermath of one of the most catastrophic industrial fires in United States history. The colors make the viewer feel the heat and the fear.
Machines: Both have a love of the automobile as a machine and an aesthetic work of art. In his lifetime, Dr. Thomas owned over 90 cars, not all at one time. The two have restored, driven, and enjoyed being around some of the world’s most unique vehicles. Steele Thomas became an automobile illustrator because of her fascination and guidance from the auto historian she was married to. Steele Thomas, a renowned illustrator, was frequently featured in Road & Track magazine for sixteen years. She was guided by Bill Motta who was the Art Director for forty years. He became her mentor.
Sue Steele Thomas will exhibit a painting from her Road & Track days along with Tangled in the Forest and i8 Among the Palms, a tribute to BMW.
The public is invited to a reception at the Montgomery Museum from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. on April 9, 2026. Sue “Susie” Steele, now Thomas, graduated from Christiansburg High School and hopes to see some of her schoolmates at the reception.