_{When Linda King sat down} for this Queerstory interview, I was immediately struck by a new air about her. She is known to be a sweet and friendly face in the social circles we share, but fairly reserved and soft-spoken as well. Today, she is visibly bursting with excitement, carrying a stack of paintings, prints and stickers and even works in progress, in all array of shapes and sizes. It was clear before she even began speaking that her passion lies not only in her craft, but in sharing it with others.

King only began painting a few years ago. It began as part of her journey of self discovery and expression after she divorced her husband and came out first as queer, and then as a lesbian. As an artist, King describes herself as “someone who is still learning a lot. I am exploring who I am as an artist in this identity that is more authentic.”

“I love it," King says. "It's somehow very relaxing and meditative and yet super focused, so I actually used painting a lot while I was really depressed." There were times when King admits she let herself become lost in her new found coping skill. "Sometimes I was probably doing too much of it, but I don't know what else I would have been doing." She thought, "This is better than what is on the other side of it. One time i stayed up for two days - during the pandemic - and I was not feeling my feelings out loud but I was feeling them through paint. And I'm glad I did."

“I didn't really plan to paint what I was feeling, but often I would paint something and look back and be like 'holy shit',” King explains, saying she would realize that what she had been going through at that time in her life naturally came out in her art. “Like, oh, I put a lot of independence in that painting, or a lot of change.”

"The first year of painting, I didn't share a lot of it cause it's very personal. Very vulnerable."

Sometimes, the art tells King what it wants to be in the world. "This is a painting that I turned into a sticker and unintentionally it ended up being a trans painting. This really, really amazing trans woman bought the original and I'm so excited about that! So, it's been really important to paint my feelings and then share them with people, because that's also scary."

King has let her priority with sharing her art be to simply make something people might think is cool. However, if her audience sees themselves in her art that she hopes it resonates with something they need.

" My art knew I was queer before I did. "

For someone who has only explored painting for a small handful of years, King's journey has already taken her through a number of creative insights. "When I first started painting, I thought that I could just do abstract and be just the best.” She had wanted an outlet, but wanted to avoid the judgement that can often discourage a new artist - skill not matching inspiration. If she stuck with just abstract art, she thought “I can't 'be wrong'. It felt safe. And I thought 'Oh, I could be good at this immediately!” But even abstract art was new to her. “I'd never done it before. I had always wanted to paint and I didn't start until a few years ago now, because I was too afraid of being vulnerable.”

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Now she focuses on realism, and chooses to intentionally contemplate her subjects as she is crafting a piece. “What feels good when I paint it? Or what feels hard? What feels like I need to address it, in some ways?” Asking these questions has helped her find answers deeper than she had previously been able to hear from inside herself. “My art knew I was queer before I did.”

King says when discovering her queerness through her art, it was a relief, even after the years of fear of being vulnerable through art. “This is amazing, I'm gay! And my life has been better ever since,” she laughs.

In exploring her queerness, King says one of the most important things was developing community with people who understood a part of her no one had seen before, even herself. “That just leads me into a whole new part of my life. I had a friend take me to a drag show; it was my first drag show ever. It was amazing.”

Turns out that first-ever-drag-show for her was Death Is Such a Drag, a murder mystery dinner show produced in the spring of the 2022 House of Hues season. I asked her who she thought the murderer was. “I had no idea! But I was in alliance with Crowbait because we sat at their table,” she laughs. Crowbait was the murderer. “I was very easily won over.”

Since then, she has established deep connections with other queer people and the community. Now, she even regularly volunteers with House of Hues. “I found a community. I found a community that feels right. It's very different in the best way.”

Moving forward with her art, King is happy to just go with the flow, letting her art tell her what it wants to be each day. "I've really been working on not putting pressure on myself in a lot of areas these last two years. I think I'm gonna just keep painting whatever I want, see what happens. No pressure." But her values continue to make their way into her work without trying. Her next series will be paintings featuring anatomy and, specifically, bones, reflecting her current studies toward a Bio Archeology degree.

"What I want to do is kind of like forensics, but for not-so fresh cases. I have two goals. I just want to live my best life, and look at bones, and find bones, and look at trauma - physical trauma and how it shows up in bones. As far as the forensic side of it... there's a really big gap where queer people are not served in the forensic department or processes. So a lot of us are missing forever. Our cases are not solved. A lot of the time, it's because they don't include identity as a factor and people are misgendered, and people are deadnamed and chosen families are not spoken to. Data is missed. There are people who are working on changing that."

And then on the side, she will continue painting eyeballs and bones. "I love eyeballs and bones!"