Lila Thomas (she/they) is a black queer Seattle-based visual artist from Southern Louisiana. She received her BFA in Drawing/Painting at Nicholls State University. Her work consists of portraits and intimate interior scenes where she uses light and color to sincerely represent the people in her life and transform mundane environments into immersive spaces. Lila has taught Figurative Painting and spoke at a lecture at Gage Academy in early 2023. She also taught a painting workshop at DePauw University as their 2023 Artist in Residence and her work has been shown in the Koplin Del Rio, Geheim Gallery Forest For The Trees, Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University, Inscape Arts, Lilith Pole Studios, Inside studios, and at a national juried art exhibition in the Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she won Best of Show.

Lila’s work explores themes of identity, family history, and cultural exchange through food, music, and mutual understanding of generational trauma. While living in Seattle she has found a sense of community with folks throughout different diasporas. Connecting over topics like food, shared culture, and music has been healing to her sense of being. She feels grounded being around people who share a sense of understanding and wants to share an honest representation of their identity by creating an intimate and immersive setting for the viewer.

Lila creates this intimate and immersive experience by using light and color to depict familiar spaces of her life with visual beauty. She achieves this by emphasizing the steady movement of light in the composition. She enjoys giving hints about the subject’s interests and identity by including objects of importance to the individual.

Lila’s driven to create these honest and beautiful depictions due to the lack of representation of black and queer folks in comfort and ease in the canon of Western art. She wants her work to act as a vessel of escapism for people who have faced generational trauma and injustices in our society because they deserve a sense of solace too.