Lila Thomas (she/they) is a Seattle-based visual artist and educator from Southern Louisiana, weaving together themes of identity, comfort, and cultural exchange in her work. Rooted in personal and collective histories, her work captures moments of intimacy, connection, and ease—offering a counter-narrative to the historical erasure of Black and queer identities in Western art. She earned her BFA in Drawing/Painting at Nicholls State University and is currently a teaching artist at the Frye Art Museum and also teaches Figurative Painting and Drawing at Gage Academy of Art, Cornish College of the Arts. 

Lila’s work has been featured in King Street Station, Hometeam Gallery, Hologram Gallery, Koplin Del Rio, Geheim Gallery, Forest for the Trees, Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University, Inscape Arts, Manifest Gallery, North Seattle College Art Gallery, Behnke Family Gallery, Gage Academy of Art, Lilith Pole Studios, and Inside Studios.

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.

She 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.