Face the Wolves II, oil on acrylic on canvas 14x11". SOLD.
Aliza and Her Monsters x Cormac Mccarthy
@cormac.mccarthy.art collaboration preview for our April 2022 show at the University Business Center. Show goes up April 5th!


🔥
"If you can't face the wolves, don't go into the forest."


I hope you have the courage to keep loving in a world that sometimes fails to do so.



Cormac painted the backgrounds of the 4 collab pieces and I did my best not to screw em' up. Only two left available!

​Shine Down on Me mini painting. Oil on panel 5x5”. SOLD.

This painting was inspired by someone who sent me a photograph the other day. I didn’t realize I needed it at the time, but the imagery and the genuine joy on their face lifted me up. 
And, like so much of my work, it was also inspired by music.
Particularly, this song “Shine” by Jagwar Twin which randomly came on my radio. The last time I saw or even heard Jagwar Twin was right before the world got very dark in 2019.
They were on tour with lovelytheband and flora cash and it was one of my last fond memories of live music.
I was thinking of captioning this with the lyrics but I ran into this statement by Roy English in an interview which I found much more heartening (Sorry to my illiterate followers.. this is another long format, it’s worth it though)

“I wrote ‘Shine’ a couple of years ago when the collective thought was ‘this couldn’t possibly get any worse!’” English said. “I was hanging out watching ‘Troy’ with Brad Pitt. A lot of war and killing people in that movie, so I wanted to write a chorus that felt happy, like the sun rising.☀️
 I wrote the chorus there on my voice memos. 
My thought was that even in dark times, there is always light if you want to find it. 
There’s love in every moment
 if you know where to look.”
✨

I hope you recognize the light when it hits you.





Maybe that’s the hidden purpose behind the human drive to create; be it a song, painting, story, conversation, or family. We learn who we are through creation and we create with every breath, every thought, and every deed. We are not defined by what we do, but by who we are. - Jagwar 
​

The Royal Fox, Mini painting. Oil on cradled panel 7x5". SOLD.

All is not OK all the time.
I do my best work when
my mind is in a bar fight with my soul. In periods of uncertainty, the one thing you can be certain of is failure in a painting. Every painting of mine fails before it gets better. The other thing you can be certain of, is it will get better. Failure is a bruise, not a tattoo. It’s important to me, as human and painter, to experience the entire rotation of life’s challenges. You have to experience everything in order to report to the world accurately.

As I go through these seasons, my work evolves. My approach to light and form and subject changes. At the end of a day spent at the easel, the only thing on my mind is “was I loyal soldier? Did I move forward, even just a little bit, the things that truly matter?

Too often, success is mistaken with popularity. If your work can connect with one person, then you have succeeded.
Our job, as I see it, is to wake up every morning
with a rage for life and
to go out on the boardwalk and
walk in a straight line
like there is no wind and
there is no rain.





​
This was an excerpt from an older post that I stumbled on while transferring my ig content to my personal blog on my website. 

Make Pretend Collection: A Rumpus Begins. oil on panel 10x10”.


Max: Let the Wild Rumpus Begin!


…And the wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.
― Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are




I paint the creatures that have wandered through my heart and mind my whole life. The animals, my monsters, represent the wild hearted spirit within us all. Serving as analogues for feelings, these creatures help me traverse the flotsam and jetsam of my childhood, telling my own stories and  offering an escape from the trappings we create for ourselves.
Understood in the context of my lived experience, painting has always been the getaway from the chaos around me. After people, animals are a relief.
While my work reflects my own childhood, I wanted my summer show to also bring people to recollect their own and that is why I began this collection.
This collection is for you.


“I think it is unnatural to think that there is such a thing as a blue-sky, white-clouded happy childhood for anybody. Childhood is a very, very tricky business of surviving it. Because if one thing goes wrong or anything goes wrong, and usually something goes wrong, then you are compromised as a human being. You're going to trip over that for a good part of your life.”
― Maurice Sendak


There is a fairytale left in all of us.
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
This is a preview for my summer 2022 show Pink Lions Paper Crowns

​🚧WORK IN PROGRESS🚧
.

We are not matchers. We are makers. I am no longer interested in the photo-real. Show me a painting. Stop making the paint be what it isn’t. Stop being something you aren’t.

This is just as much a painting as it is an imprint of my own emotional architecture directly applied layer after layer. Blending paint, bending myself into the weave of the canvas.

There is a pull toward this vision to see the threads that connect all of us. Does anything bring people together more than images?
The moment you realize that painting is neither a mirror nor a window, you will understand freedom. Painting is a container of you, minus everything else in the world. And it takes a lot of living to fill.

Freedom has a face. It’s a face of wildness that makes no apologies for being exactly how it is. The trick is to be able to walk around all day without hiding it.

Artists can be quite broken people. We create and then ask people if they like it. But the real pay off is the wild, and you know the taste.
.
.
.
✌🏻.
.
Oil on canvas 18x24”.

Make Pretend Collection: Little Max and Carol, tiny format IV. 5x7” oil on mini panel


Do practical things if you want your tombstone to read

"They were practical."

Do what makes sense if you think it should say

"Their life made sense."

Do what the world wants if you believe in the epitaph
"They did what the world wanted them to do."

But if you want it to read

"They lived every second they were given 
and touched the sky every chance they had, 
they burned and blazed in all the colours the eye can see 
and left a hole shaped like them in the world 
when they left."


Then do something else.  - pleasefindthis
​


​To see my work go to places they are treasured is the most heartening experience. Legacy is what gives artists the chance to answer the question of “how do I want to be remembered?”
My work is what will remain here long after I go and it means the world to have collectors who I have come to adore. Thank you for believing in me. 🥺 I won’t be a nurse practitioner forever but I assure you, 
I’ll paint until I can’t.
What do you want the hole shaped like you in the world to look like when you leave?

Make Pretend Collection: Little Max and Carol, tiny format III. 6x4”


“Carol: So, what ever happened with you and the Vikings?
Max: Well, in the end I had to leave.
Carol: Why?
Max: I'm not a Viking or a king, or... or anything.
Carol: So, what are you?
Max: I'm Max.
Carol : [sigh] Well, that's not very much, is it?”
-‘ From the movie adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are’.


“. . .from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.”
― Maurice Sendak


I think this is something we forget as we grow up. A lot of people need to work through childhoods that hurt them in order to reconcile their own Wild Thing …and so much of this can be done through art. 
I am lucky to do what I do and every mark that hits a canvas is a little victory in keeping joy in my life. It’s the only tool I’ve got for organization in a world too chaotic to hold still.


“You think I’m trying to make art? Man, I’m just trying to make a living.”

Make Pretend Collection: Little Max and Carol Tiny Format  II, oil on panel 6x4". SOLD.
Quote from the movie adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are:

​Max:
Carol, did you know the sun was gonna die?
Carol:
What? I never heard that... Oh, come on. That can't happen. I mean you're the king, and look at me, I'm big! how can guys like us worry about a tiny little thing like the sun, hmm?

[an excerpt from an old sketch book page because why not]

There was one sunrise we watched together that I might think of all my life. You were in a rare but foul mood, I was dizzy from 3 sleepless nights and what I would come to know as the worst GI bug of my life. We drove to the ocean. I turned on the Postal Service. You got out of the car. I rolled down the windows. I watched you infront the dawn at the sea side.  it was that moment I knew the next fight I was done. You were never the shore for me.
A coastline abandoning the shore.
And the sunrise was spectacular.

Make Pretend Collection: Little Max & Carol, oil on panel 8x10"
This is a quote from the movie adaptation:

“Douglas: Will you keep out all the sadness?
Max: I have a sadness shield that keeps out all the sadness, and it's big enough for all of us.”
- 'Where The Wild Things Are'


There is a fairy tale still left in all of us. Believe that good things can still happen in spite of… everything.

Sometimes we just need to see a happy ending. Even if it isn’t our own.
When we see people facing their fears, triumphing over adversity and succeed, we feel lifted. It inspires us to think: “If they can do it, why can’t I?”

For anyone out there who needs a shoulder.
Here is an indisputable fact:
you matter.

Make Pretend Series: Little Max, Big Temper, Oil on Panel 8x10"

“I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more.”
― Maurice Sendak

If you don’t fight against your limitations 
You get to keep them.

In the story book, Max gets into an argument with his mom and she calls him a “wild thing”, he yells “ILL EAT YOU UP!”…and so she sends him to bed without dinner. 
And so he flees to his room.
And then?
To his imagination.


One of my art heroes, Tim Burton, said something I will always come back to: “visions are worth fighting for.”
And I think that sentiment is something every artist should take with them into the safety of their own creative spaces. No vision is too big or too small not to chase down and rumble with.

Let’s rage.


I’ve got plenty more to say on this matter and looking forward to telling my own stories in my show this summer. This is a preview for my August 2022 show. ❤️to be continued.

[original post 01/05/22]Make Pretend Collection: Little Max and Carol. After Where The Wild Things Are. Oil on panel 5x7”.

“They do make love stories for girls with black hearts after all. They go like this.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

I want you to know: There is a fairy tale still left in all of us. Believe that good things can still happen in spite of… everything.

Sometimes we just need to see a happy ending. Even if it isn’t our own.
When we see people facing their fears, triumphing over adversity and succeed, we feel lifted. It inspires us to think: “If they can do it, why can’t I?”

For anyone out there who needs a shoulder.
And an indisputable fact:
you matter.

Inside all of us is Hope.
Inside all of us is Fear.
Inside all of us is Adventure.
Inside all of us is… A Wild Thing.”
- 'Where The Wild Things Are'.


A preview for my August show at Cole
​ 👑🦁PINK LIONS. PAPER CROWNS. August 2022❤️

After a full weekend of painting commissions (a kick ass dog portrait commissioned as a birthday gift, how friggin cool!) and a solid start on a 3 ft tall fox wearing a crown in a birch tree forest, I realized that painting for others is definitely not as personally fulfilling as when I'm pushing the paint around for myself. Lesson learned! While there is no place else I'd rather be on a cold cloudy day, I learned it's essential to make room on the easel for what I want to paint for this to be truly sustainable. I don't take on a ton of commissions so maybe this was just a one-off situation.
I'll continue to be exceptionally picky about the commissions I do take on. I think there's plenty of flat art in the world and if I'm not inspired by the work then it's just not going to sing.
I'm here finding my own voice to paint my own tunes. ✌🏻

​Saul Kinderis went to every single one of my shows, even the ones on Whidbey. I saw him at my show about a month ago. He stayed with me and kept my mind off the melt down I was I having about standing in front of my work in public - the entire time. Almost 3 hours.
I am pretty shattered hearing about his passing recently and just wanted to say something today but will write something proper when I find all the words. It’s a sunny day but the world is a little less bright with his departure.
Heavy heart looking at the commission I had nearly finished for you.
Rest In Peace​

"After December." Oil on canvas 18x24". Original now framed and available from www. colegallery.net
Now available as a limited edition print! 


-Original Caption- Painted
JANUARY 1, 2021 

“I guess the winter makes you talk a little slower, laugh a little lower about the things you could not show
And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass.”
A Long December / Counting Crows/ A Duritz

Sometimes I write a lot about my work.
....but sometimes I just listen.

Happy New Year.

---About the Bears---

I spent a lot of my childhood feeling not very brave.Painting and drawing animals was always an escape for means most of my characters I’ve been painting since I was a kid.
In 2020, the bears showed up a lot in the studio. As I started sharing my work, friends and family would occasionally share it in their networks. A family friend sent my mom a drawing Ii did around age 5 or 6. 
I scrawled : Dad is [backpacking] in the Olympics, I’m scared he’s going to get eaten by a bear.

I want to see my monsters as autonomous strong beings with force. And, as an artist, who is human as heck,
this is how I build that strength for myself - with the paintings.

[Context: ‘Waking up wild’ is a term we used to use when I worked in the hospital describing the phenomenon that occurs when patients recover from anesthesia and come back to life completely out of sorts and wildly disorganized physically and emotionally. It’s probably used to describe a lot of other things, too.]​

In the past, I've used the term 'waking up wild' to describe how anxiety can manifest for me in ways I have no control over: there are days I wake up and it feels as though a bear is chasing me. Even though there is no threat and there is no bear, the danger feels very real.
Painting them and seeing them all the time in the studio makes the bad days a little less so. 
On the bad days when I wake up and that bear is chasing me, it’s less scary when you’ve made a place for them to come and go. 
When you already know what they look like, you don’t have to keep checking over your shoulder so much.
 You can just accept that it’s there and trust that, yeah the bear chase is on the for day, but in the end, you’re going to survive. 

---About the Bears---
Images from the studio and the easel of April 2020. Thought from March 2022.
​
I spent a lot of my childhood feeling not very brave.Painting and drawing animals was always an escape for means most of my characters I’ve been painting since I was a kid.
In 2020, the bears showed up a lot in the studio. As I started sharing my work, friends and family would occasionally share it in their networks. A family friend sent my mom a drawing Ii did around age 5 or 6. 
I scrawled : Dad is [backpacking] in the Olympics, I’m scared he’s going to get eaten by a bear.

I want to see my monsters as autonomous strong beings with force. And, as an artist, who is human as heck,
this is how I build that strength for myself - with the paintings.

[Context: ‘Waking up wild’ is a term we used to use when I worked in the hospital describing the phenomenon that occurs when patients recover from anesthesia and come back to life completely out of sorts and wildly disorganized physically and emotionally. It’s probably used to describe a lot of other things, too.]​

In the past, I've used the term 'waking up wild' to describe how anxiety can manifest for me in ways I have no control over: there are days I wake up and it feels as though a bear is chasing me. Even though there is no threat and there is no bear, the danger feels very real.
Painting them and seeing them all the time in the studio makes the bad days a little less so. 
On the bad days when I wake up and that bear is chasing me, it’s less scary when you’ve made a place for them to come and go. 
When you already know what they look like, you don’t have to keep checking over your shoulder so much.
 You can just accept that it’s there and trust that, yeah the bear chase is on the for day, but in the end, you’re going to survive. 

The Calling. Oil on panel 8x10” study original SOLD.
✨Ltd ed prints now available!
 Reference from an amazing photo by Debbie Dicarlo! @debbie.dicarlo.photography for more stunners !


Loneliness is a kind of winter. And you drag me, kicking and screaming, into some kind of bright summer. -Ian Thomas


It is invigorating to finally decide to dedicate your life to what brings you joy. Being an artist is a vulnerable path. You create something intensely personal and then open your heart to the world. 
Not everyone is so fearless.
It’s actually not about being fearless.


Don't let
anybody tell you you can’t, or to not be afraid. 
 It's okay to be afraid
because you can't be brave or courageous
without fear.


Art is a skill like playing an instrument or driving a car. Given a lot of hard work and time, you can improve over time. But… Sometimes practice makes you feel like trash.
It can feel scary because the prospect of failing can be paralyzing.


Do something scary.
Go pick up that paintbrush.
Put in those brush-miles.
✌🏻

The Calling, pt III. Oil on panel 24x12", in progress
​
There is a light that shines
where there is darkness


There is still love
where there is fighting


There is a noise
Where there is silence.


She’s not singing because she has an answer.
She’s singing because 
she has a song.


How sad is it
To be somewhere else
When you’re here.

There are days I dream about
Being with the stars and the 🌙 moon
Perhaps I already am
Perhaps you are, too.

​

[Original Post February 21, 2021] Oil on canvas  16x20" SOLD.
[It's been brought to my attention that my content, everything I've ever put on instagram, I don't own. 
If social media collapses, so does everything I've written about my work. I'll be going through my posts working to transfer my work, thoughtful captions, etc to my own blog, The Easel Weasel,
This is a visual autopsy of sorts until we get caught up to present day! Some of these I will repost to the gram as I think it’s insane to look back on my journey these past 2 years.]

--ORIGINAL CAPTION--

I have late night conversations with the moon.
He tells me about the sun
I tell him about
you.
-SL Gray
.
When I was working as a nurse in a hospital ( and working 2 other side/locums jobs) after my third year, I hit the wall. I found myself asking
What was I about?
What was I good at?
What do I want to put in this world?
I thought of that crap from Malcolm Gladwell's conversation around 10,000 hours, and how that is the difference between excellence and hobby.
What would I want to spend 10,000 hours doing?
I didn’t have the answer but it was offered to me by my dad.
I wasn’t sleeping much. I was emotionally burned out from my job and physically spent from years of consistent marathon racing and training.
He suggested I start painting again.
And there it was.

I don’t think I am here to win all the marathons or save everyone’s life (I’ll save as many as I can while I’m here though 🙃).

I wanted to create paintings worth viewing.
I wanted to paint everything  I just don’t have the words for in a way that can somehow move people the very same way the paint helps me climb out of the dark.

There comes a point where life merely happens to you or you happen to life. I look back on my twenties, from behind an easel, and I am so glad
I didn't spend my life reacting.
I’m here to paint.

✌🏻.
.