Meet Lindsay Thomasson, the lesbian artist behind ArtbyLid

Lindsay Thomasson’s art takes you down memory lane; sometimes, the memories aren’t even your own. The 24-year-old queer artist transforms some of life’s most simple moments into pieces that evoke feelings of comfort and familiarity. Although not everyone has experienced making out in the bathroom, sneaking out of a window at night with your rapscallion friends, or skinny dipping under the stars, when you look at Thomasson’s art depicting such scenes, it feels like you have.

Often illustrating girlhood, Thomasson’s art is a bridge for those who didn’t get to express their femininity until adulthood; for trans women who didn’t get to attend a slumber party with their best gal pals when they were younger or for young girls that didn’t quite fit in and struggled with self-image who didn’t hang around in the girl’s restroom gossiping. Thomasson’s evocative work helps heal the inner child of those who missed out on that stage of adolescence.

OFM chatted with the artist about her work and queerness.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What was your first piece that got a lot of traction and helped build your online following?

I started posting my art when I was 15 or 16, which is, like, 2014, 2015, on that account. You know, it was always, like, cruising at 200 or 500 followers. Things kind of started taking off during the pandemic. It’s common for artists to kind of have a breakthrough piece, and that definitely happened to me… I did this one digital illustration of a pink bathroom with a couple of girls in the bathroom. And that was definitely a breakthrough moment for me in terms of subject matter and style. And then things just kind of snowballed from there. I reigned that style as much as I could and kept producing stuff in that world, and people responded to it. People liked it.

What do you think people liked about that piece that kind of went viral?

I think a big factor of my work is nostalgia. I’ve kind of always been fascinated by how powerful it is. I think one of my favorite things is when people can see themselves in the work that I make. On my socials, they’ll tag their friends and be like, you know, this looks like us. Like, this reminds me of the bathroom at my high school. I think that is one of my main driving forces is the power of nostalgia and that sort of thing.

Who would you say your target audience is?

I think probably people like me. Just statistics-wise, like, looking at my Instagram and TikTok and who follows me, it’s mostly queer women from the ages of 18 to 24. I think a big chunk of the people that follow me are queer people who maybe came out in their 20s or maybe experienced teenage-hood not fully being able to be themselves. And so, looking back, as a 20-something, you kind of wish you could do it over. I think that something that speaks to people with my stuff is this kind of second adolescence that follows in their 20s (when they) didn’t really experience their adolescence the way they wanted to or the way they wish it went.

How does it feel to make art that resonates with people like you just described—to make people feel that nostalgia or experiences that they missed out on when they were younger?

It’s great. I think that’s definitely a big part of why I want to stay in this lane is just queer people reaching out to me, and whether it’s people my age who kind of are experiencing this second adolescence in their 20s where their inner child is being really loud, and they can still have that rebellious nature that they experienced in adolescence, following them into adulthood. Just kind of being like, yeah, this has given me a chance to reflect on that.

Whether it’s people in their 20s or younger—I got a message yesterday from a teenager who was like, “Your art makes me feel like I can have a positive experience while I’m still young.” That just means so much. And also, trans women messaging me and saying they can get a sense of girlhood through my art, that they were robbed as a child; they didn’t get to experience that. That sense of girlhood in my art, it’s a vehicle through which they can experience it. It’s amazing. It’s definitely, like, a driving force for me.

What does girlhood mean to you?

I’m 6’2 and over 200 pounds. So my whole life, I’ve kind of been a foot taller than everybody around me. In my school photos, you can point me out immediately because I’m literally a head taller than everybody else. You know how middle school and high school kids are. Having that experience and being a woman that takes up that much space in a hostile environment like high school and in public middle school, it alters your brain chemistry. So I kind of dampened my feminine expression as a means to compensate, to take up less space.

And I thought that if I chose to be this like sports girl, this tomboy—because I was really heavily into sports in middle school in high school—I thought taking that route and being that type of person and being that type of girl, it would be, like, OK for me to take up that much space…

So I think girlhood is so important to me because it’s taken so much unlearning for me to feel OK and feel unapologetic about taking up so much space. Using girlhood and my experiences as a young girl going to sleepovers and buying those shitty makeup palettes from Claire’s and little things like that—kind of just reconnecting with that and using my art as a means to reconnect with my femininity in a way.

Then you also sometimes like to depict boyhood. What does boyhood look like to you?

I grew up with two older brothers, so I guess I kind of have an understanding of boyhood, obviously not as much as I do girlhood, but I think when talking about boyhood, I think I like to explore the tender parts because, as we know, fragile masculinity is so prevalent today that I think it’s important for men to remind themselves of those tender moments, of their boyhood.

I did a drawing of a boy who had fallen on the ground and scraped himself up, and his friend was cleaning him up, putting a bandaid on. I just think it’s sweet and think it’s something that men should kind of go back to more often, kind of remembering those tender moments. And obviously, I’m much less familiar with boyhood, so I don’t do it as often. But that’s kind of my understanding of it. And also, I’m always trying to expand my arsenal of the type of characters I draw. Whether that’s gay men—I don’t do men a lot. I’m trying to get better at that—But it’s just not my expertise. But I think small glimpses into boyhood like that help me with expanding that.

Your art often features two femme-presenting people in relationships. Do you use your art to express your own queerness?

I see so many kids just authentically being themselves in high school, and I feel like that’s a shift that’s happened in the last couple of years. And it’s so incredible to see, but that was not my reality. I was very much in the closet the majority of high school and then even into college a little bit. So, I feel like, most of my life that I’ve lived, I haven’t been able to fully express my queerness, and even when I did come out, I was still kind of softening the edges of my queerness just for other people to be comfortable.

I think that my art is to rebel against that, in a way. I think everything kind of came to a head when I started gaining popularity online. I think that’s something that happened to a lot of people during the pandemic, is kind of coming into their own and having big realizations in moments about their sexuality and their gender and whatnot. I think that definitely happened too, and that’s when I kind of was like, I’m gonna start expressing myself to the fullest, and I think that my art is a good vehicle for that.