Dear me,
Be whatever you want to be.
👑🦁


There is a fairytale left in us all.
Don't ever get so hung up on plans and goals that you forget to leave room for the unimaginable.


Turning myself inside out sharing the creatures than have wandered across my heart and mind is not easy.


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?”


A painting kept in the studio is safe
But that is not where they belong.
You can stay comfortable,
Or you can risk everything
And grow.


This is a preview for my summer 2022 show Pink Lions Paper Crowns.


I can’t wait to share these stories.

Today I posted a reel to my instagram. This is a reel of my weekend. I reposted as a regular post for caption and no text in the video.
Here's what I have to say on this "weekend" recap:  Dhirubhai Ambani said, “If you don't build your dream, someone else will hire you to help them build theirs.”


This “weekend” I painted a new piece, finished the first layer on one I started last week, sketched/blocked in a really big new 40x30” composition, started and totally messed up a new mini, varnished and wired the backings on finished work, picked up and even delivered a big custom print order.
And I I still felt like I didn’t “do” much.
Because outside of this, I didn’t.
I guard my time in the studio fiercely to do what I do and share it with all of you hoping maybe it might inspire someone else to pursue their art.
Just know, it isn’t easy and it comes at a cost I choose to pay.
(Despite a lot of therapy, It also comes with a heavy load of self-criticism)


You make time for the things that are important to you. There is no easy balance to working a full time job as a nurse practitioner while being a painter, a dog mom, a distance runner, a good sister, friend and daughter. 
Seeing my work resonate with so many is what keeps my heart pumping.
To build those dreams, You're going to have to make sacrifices.
Are your dreams worth it?

​“Cecelia and the Satellite.”
Tiny oil painting on  panel 5x5”.
✨🔴SOLD


In the original caption for this piece, I talk about the artist who does my tattoos. You learn a lot about how to deal with pain for extended periods of time, but you also learn a lot about trust. I don’t think a single client of Jeff Cornell (@horijefe) would tell you they left without hearing him sing or hum along to whatever was jamming in the shop or his heart. He was never short on encouraging me to pursue art
 I was shattered to see his diagnosis of advanced colon cancer. If you want an idea of just how treasured this man is, his gofundme has raised almost $50k out of his 85k goal in just 6 days.
Please take a moment for him and his sweet family if you can.


-Original caption-
Stephen King says “all novels are really letters aimed at one person.” I don’t view my work much differently.


Similarly, the artist who does my tattoos, @horijefe once told me something I’ll never forget. Mind you, he’s not only the grand daddy of the Seattle tattoo scene, but he’s a brilliant musician.


✨“Doesn’t matter what type of music it is, I think every song is a love song.”


And initially I was a little distracted by the fact he was drilling my elbow (OW!) but the more I thought about it? I couldn’t agree more.


I had a 3 piece series of bears that were letters to someone and part of gluing back together a broken heart.


The last of the bear letters was called “Even Every Sunday” :
.
“Hi.
I know we didn’t talk after I left.
But maybe the best part about not seeing you anymore
is I can still write you these letters. Even if all we had left were Sundays, I’d still write. Because maybe these aren’t even letters anymore than they are the story
of how I found myself.
.
I don’t think I need to send this one, after all.”


🪐✨… and here I am again.
Trying to tell you.
There is a girl who still writes to you.
She doesn’t know how not to.
🐻✨


Don’t be fooled, these are not paintings
These are love songs.


The title of this piece is from a song by Andrew Mcmahon and the Wilderness

Korra, a special commission. Oil on panel 20x16”. And a bonus mini 5x7”!








No matter how crummy you feel, that little dog is gonna love you.


There is nothing that can replace the hole left behind in our hearts when the people we love are no longer here with us. For some, the hole is wider and darker during birthdays, holidays, graduations.
But, for those who choose to share their lives with dogs, you understand the hole can be a little less dark with one by your side.
When I was asked if I had time to paint a commission as a special birthday gift for a girl who is no longer fond of birthdays, I really didn’t. But it wasn’t a commission I would turn down in a million years.


To be able to play a small role in making this gift that was so heart felt is everything.


As you know by now,
While it may be a wait list sometimes,
Dog commissions are always open here.
--
Sometimes I am provided a selection of references that I honestly just can’t pick which one I want to paint. So I don’t.
I paint a couple and send a bonus! 😂

All I Need I. Oil on canvas. 20x16". Original sold before it was even for sale, limited edition prints available!

​Share what you love
And the people who love the same thing will find you.


“But really, all we want, and I speak for the entire human race here, is contact. Someone to let us know that we aren’t alone. That the world isn’t a dream and you and I really are happening at the same time, even if it’s not in the same place. That this is real. You’re really there. I’m really here. We’re real. This is real.” ― pleasefindthis, I Wrote This For You


I’m just going to keep asking you to do your part and keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
One day we will all get to wake up from this one.
Hope begins in the dark.
🖤


My mom sent me a photo from one of my childhood sketchbooks, age 9 or 10 and the pages- studies, really, of a fennec fox.


I had to follow the thread as soon as I saw it.
In this piece I knew 3 things from these unlikely companions:
I wanted a lightness,
a softness,
a tenderness.
I wanted what I have never been able to hold.


If I can paint them, I can see them and I can know them, in a sense. And no, they might not be mine forever


but for a moment
I forget about everything that ever took them away from me.




I never know where my work is going to end up
but I know if I don’t share it,
it’s going nowhere. I quickly shied off sharing this piece as it grabbed me in such a way I’ve never experienced with my own work. Now that I know it’s going somewhere it will be treasured just as much, the weight of the world has lifted.


I don’t have the vocabulary to properly convey just how special this piece was to me, but when I put down the final mark I took a step back from the easel and felt so strongly that someone needed to witness this with me. I called my mom to show her, and for a moment, I got to hold the feeling that I’ve chased my entire life. It feels like when you’ve been holding your breath for 32 years then finally exhale and let it all go. Breathe, paint, breathe, keep painting. I’m 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.❤️


Since the original sold i keep finding myself looking for it on the wall. I finally ordered myself a canvas wrap print for the studio and it came out perfect. I can’t tell you how nice it is to have these two back in the studio 🥺

📸by @somerrunner
The Royal 👑Collection on the easel in the background


Don’t ever apologize for the fire in you.
The denial of your actual feelings doesn’t create better ones.
Never say sorry being real. Never apologize for how you chose to survive.


You’re like a little wild thing
that was never sent to school.
-Mary Oliver


This new Royal character,  he’s a little moody.
He’s a little bit untamed. Shine your savage crown sometimes.
I think all of us has a little bit of the Royal 👑 in them.
Some are just a little better medicated, that’s all… 😆


Really loving this new character.

​

Ruth. Oil on canvas 30x40”. Congratulations to @colegallery , original is SOLD❗️
Limited Edition prints, signed with COA available directly from alizaandhermonsters.com



I’m often asked where the name “Ruth” came from. 
✨Here’s the original caption explaining the title:


People who say they don’t need anybody went through a lot of things alone.
A lot of things broke my heart
but fixed my vision.


I read somewhere that a piece of art that speaks to you can open windows in a room you hadn’t even known was dark. I had posted this piece initially to my personal social media account and it really resonated with the person this piece is named after. She asked me what her name was, the tiger. She hoped it was something fierce, independent and sexy to fit her vibe.
I know these creatures in my heart and soul.Truth be told, I never name them until someone needs one. I cannot tell you how much it means to artists to hear someone relate to your work.
It really is everything.


I knew in a second what the tiger’s name was.
I answered Ruth’s inquiry promptly, posting this piece with its proper title. 💖


I considered copying some of what she had written to me about what this piece meant to her, but I actually think it is better if you look at it and take away whatever is there for you.


This piece is definitely one of my precious babies, as are most of my tigers.


If you know, you know.
“Art is restoration: the idea is to repair the damages that are inflicted in life, to make something that is fragmented – which is what fear and anxiety do to a person – into something whole.” L. Bourgeois


Everything I paint is a small part of me. But, Ruth was one of those pieces that helped me understand art is an effort toward wholeness, both for the creator and the viewer. It’s bittersweet to see her sell. When my work sells through the gallery I never know where they end up but I trust she found the most perfect home.


 Ink by @horijefe, last photo by @somerrunner

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.