🌊 Lake Days, Blue Monsters & Birthday Cats 🎂

I hope you’re all enjoying the start of summer. Between lake days, painting projects, and a few exciting new additions to my studio, the past couple of weeks have been filled with sunshine, creativity, and plenty of stories.

🚤 Lake Life & Carolina Days

The week before last, I escaped to my favorite body of water: High Rock Lake in North Carolina. Is it the fanciest lake? Absolutely not. Does it have an undeniable redneck charm that I love? Absolutely.

I spent my days slalom skiing behind the boat, taking long walks, and soaking up what felt like surprisingly mild Carolina weather. The temperature only rose to 90° with humidity only hitting around 70%. lol. My brother has fully embraced his gardening era, growing everything from okra and pittypat squash to peaches and apples. Basically, I ate very well all week.

Evenings were reserved for my favorite game: Spades. My boyfriend always insists on cutting the deck thick like a hick, while I cut it thin so I can win. In case you were curious, I did in fact win. 

In between all the lake adventures, I

finished a commissioned portrait of a very special dog. The painting includes little nods to the dog’s early life in Brooklyn, along with details inspired by its name and plenty of attention paid to its unique texture and personality. It was one of those pieces that slowly came together over the course of the week.

Leaving North Carolina is always bittersweet, but as I’m writing this, I’m stretched out by the beach in Venice, so reality isn’t feeling too bad either.

🎨 A Monster Moves Into the Neighborhood

This past week, I finally painted something I’ve wanted to do for a long time: my front gate.

A giant blue bunny monster now sits proudly atop a flower right outside my house. My once plain white gate is now covered in bright colors and one of my signature creatures. It’s currently the only piece of art on my side of the street!

Painting outside all day on one of Venice’s busiest streets was an experience in itself. Since it’s one of the few places with free beach parking, I met quite the cast of characters. I had conversations about my art, music festivals, local life, and just about everything in between. Nearly every person who walked by wanted to chat.

As someone who doesn’t always love being interrupted while working, it was probably good for me. It also somehow made me paint faster.

I came home exhausted, sunburnt, and covered in paint, but every time I walk outside now and see my blue monster smiling back at me, I know it was worth it.

So if you’re ever hunting for free parking near Venice Beach, keep an eye out. You might stumble across my little blue guy.

📸 New Camera, Same Mooncake

Last week I also made a pretty big investment: I bought a new camera.

The original plan was to finally photograph my artwork properly so that my online shop can show pieces the way they actually look in real life. Capturing texture, color, and all the little whimsical details has always been difficult with my phone.

However, after looking through the camera roll, I can confidently say that Mooncake has become the primary subject.

There are already over fifty photos of her.

To be fair, she is art.

Speaking of Mooncake, she recently turned five years old! She celebrated her birthday in North Carolina because, as usual, she came along for the adventure. Now she’s back in Venice, perched in her cat tree, spending her days supervising neighborhood activity and judging every interesting character that walks by.

🎁 Father’s Day Is Around the Corner

Father’s Day is coming up quickly! If you’re looking for a unique gift, I can make hand-painted matchboxes, personal cards, mini paintings, and just about any kind of custom artwork.

If you’d like something personalized, now is a great time to reach out so I can make sure it arrives in time.

With love and color,

Rosalie

Shanghai Through My Eyes 🏮

🎨 New Paintings, New Worlds

I’m currently working on a new pet portrait commission which I cannot wait to share once it’s complete, but alongside commissions, I’ve also been pouring energy into a passion project that feels incredibly personal to me.

I’ve officially started the second piece in my new China inspired series, currently titled “China Through the Eyes of an American” though the name is still evolving just like the paintings themselves. Here is the completed first piece. 

The newest piece features something that perfectly captures the spirit of Shanghai to me. A McDonald’s pop up sitting directly beside Jing’an Temple, one of Shanghai’s most historic Buddhist temples and landmarks. At first glance it feels absurd. Why would a McDonald’s be planted in the front yard of a centuries old temple? But honestly, that contrast is exactly what I love so much about China.

 🏙️ Ancient Meets Hyper Modern

Shanghai constantly feels like two worlds existing at once. My metro stop was actually located directly beneath Jing’an Temple. I would enter through one of the city’s gigantic malls, ride an escalator deep underground, walk beneath the temple walls, and suddenly find myself entering the metro station below it all. Somehow, this felt completely normal there.

Last year when Chandler visited China with me, he joked that Shake Shack seemed to have a monopoly on historic landmarks because every teahouse, pagoda, temple, or cultural site somehow had a Shake Shack nearby. Honestly, he wasn’t wrong.

But that balance between old and new is what makes the city feel so alive to me.

You’ll see aunties dancing together in parks every evening in perfect unison while delivery drivers scoot by and now, delivery drones buzz overhead. You’ll pass alleyways where locals still play mahjong at folding tables, drape laundry from their windows, and gather outside with cigarettes and baijiu in hand, all while being surrounded by glowing skyscrapers and some of the most futuristic architecture imaginable.

🥠 Looking Closer

What I’m trying to capture in this series is the feeling of looking beyond Shanghai’s skyline. From far away, the city appears ultra modern, polished, and almost futuristic. But when you slow down and look closer, the older rhythms of life are still deeply present and flourishing.

That coexistence is beautiful to me.

China never felt like a place abandoning its culture in favor of modernization. Instead, it felt like culture adapting, surviving, and weaving itself directly into the future. That tension between neon lights and historic alleyways, between temples and fast food chains, between tradition and hyper modernity is exactly what I want these paintings to hold.

With love and color,

Rosalie

🌷🪞 Tufted Mirrors & Chinatown Daydreams 🧧🪄

Happy belated Mother’s Day to all the moms, mother figures, grandmothers, pet moms, and everyone spending the day surrounded by love in one way or another 💐 Living only a mile away from my mom now means we get to exist in our own little Venice bubble together more often, full of salty air, eclectic neighbors, long walks, and lots of color. We spent the day together and I made homemade caprese chicken orzo for dinner which felt fresh and light for a warm May evening. There is something so wonderful about cooking for someone who spent years cooking for you.

🧶💜 A Mirror for Violet

My newest tufting project was made for my mom, but also, for Violet. Mooncake has a mirror, so obviously Violet needed one too. 

I ordered a small mirror online, about the

size of a rottweiler’s head which honestly feels like the only acceptable unit of measurement for this project, and designed a tufted border around it filled with tiny symbols and details. Hearts, stars, little pops of color, and even a dog

bone tucked into the design for Violet herself. The border is made up of my mom’s favorite color combination, reds and purples, and for once I finally used yarn that does not shed all over my place. Thank you Google for guiding me toward the correct tufting materials before I accidentally created another fluffy disaster.

I also made a few smaller homemade gifts including a collage of Violet photos with a hand sewn violet attached to it, but the mirror definitely became the centerpiece.

📦🖼️ Prints Flying Across the Country

Lately I’ve been quietly revamping the shop section of my website to make it feel more organized and easier to browse. The old version started feeling like a giant overflowing drawer where everything had been shoved together with no system whatsoever.

While reorganizing everything, my somewhat neglected Etsy shop suddenly started getting attention again and prints are officially heading out across the country this week. It never stops feeling surreal seeing strangers connect with my work enough to bring it into their homes. Somewhere out there, little monsters and colorful objects are being unpacked in apartments and houses I will probably never see, which is a very beautiful thing to think about.

🏮🎐 Returning to My China Inspired Roots

As for current projects, I’ve started working on a new series that feels very connected to my years living in China. Instead of my usual fully whimsical monster scenes, these new mini paintings lean more observational and grounded in real places and memories.

A year or two ago I completed a commissioned Shanghai streetscape and ever since then I’ve wanted to revisit that visual world. This new body of work feels like exploring China through the eyes of an American who speaks the language, deeply cherishes the culture, and still carries those experiences everywhere she goes.

The first piece is inspired by a photograph I took in Chinatown in San Francisco. Most of the series will pull from places I visited while living in China, but since I’m back in the States now, it feels meaningful to also document the traces of Chinese culture I seek out here too. No matter where I travel, I always end up wandering into Chinatown first. Maybe it feels familiar, maybe comforting, maybe nostalgic. Probably all three.

I’m excited to slowly build this series into something that feels both personal and documentary, combining memory, travel, language, and visual storytelling all together in one place 🧧✨

With love and color,

Rosalie