Charlie Thorla

I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember, particularly of family and friends. I loved to draw characters from stories and making my own characters. One of my favorite things to draw now are hands, which took a long time for me enjoy doing. When I do self portraits, I tend to emphasize my journey through gender identity and my history with discovering who I am after years of questioning and feeling lost with how I identified myself. I always knew I was an artist no matter what, and art was one of the ways I coped with gender identity and was able to express my feelings that I didn’t know how to describe. It helped me connect with people and other artists and it helped me cope with my friend’s death from leukemia. Drawing was always something I gravitated to when I experienced hardships and when I wanted to spend time doing something I enjoyed. I mainly do graphite drawings and digital work, but school opened me up to trying painting and taking more risks that I wouldn’t have thought to take before.