In 2014, I began creating portraits of some of my favorite historical queer people, writing a sentence or two about each and sharing them on Tumblr. At first I only had a handful of people in mind, but the project kept growing as the biographies grew more in depth.
Two years later, I took my first 60 illustrations and hand-built Queer Portraits in History, a permanent home for the project and an entry point to exploring LGBTQ history through the people who created it.
After seeing the website, the publisher Hardie Grant asked me to illustrate portraits for what would become a series of books:
Queer Portraits in History has been featured in gallery shows, Pride month displays, and education resource kits. The project taught me so much about queer history, and I’m proud of its continued impact.
