Aliza Stone Howard

Aliza Stone Howard is a New York City based painter whose oil paintings chart the experience of consuming, remembering, and identifying with the zeitgeisty, conventionally feminine cultural elements that her work centers. Her portraits depicting 90s and early 2000s film and TV stills, in particular, explore the female characters who nurtured her conception of herself and whose mannerisms, quotes, and styling have taken a fixed role both in Howard’s understanding of femininity, from tweenhood to motherhood, as well as the culture’s at large. In devoting herself to a representative oil painting tradition characterized by permanence, even formality, Howard’s paintings recast seemingly vacuous, transient subject matter with emotional charge and sincere connection. 

Howard has a BA in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard. Her paintings have been exhibited in various group shows throughout NYC, acknowledged in online art publications, and internationally collected by private collectors.

Collect Bean: What is the kindest thing someone can tell you about your work?

Aliza Stone Howard: The kindest thing someone can tell me about my work is that my paintings caused them to experience a moment of identification or self-realization. I am really invested in communicating relatable emotion in my work, especially through portraits. When viewers tell me that my paintings enable them to locate or remember some meaningful aspect of themselves, I feel like I am succeeding not only at presenting engaging work but also in facilitating this human interaction. 

Collect Bean: Are there any recurring themes or motifs in your art, and if so, what do they represent to you?

Aliza Stone Howard: I am driven by an exploration of feminine self-construction, and so my work heavily features devotedly painted clothing, made-up faces, manicures, and very specific hairstyles and hair color. The truth is, all of these external elements can be pathways to a person’s psyche and mode of self-presentation. I often paint iconic female characters from films, to whom I lovingly refer as “the women who raised me.” Their outfits, possessions, expressions, and mannerisms formed the basis of my understanding of feminine identity. 

Collect Bean: What does an ideal day in your studio look like? 

Aliza Stone Howard: An ideal day in my studio starts with a fully mixed palette so I can be totally present while painting with all my materials ready. Giant mug of coffee in one hand, a paintbrush in the other, I shuffle between some combination of 90s girl rock, Fleetwood Mac, and, admittedly, Taylor Swift, which makes my daughters proud. The most special studio days entail some surprise experience of being in a flow state. I haven’t quite yet identified what mysterious elements combine to put me in that occasional trance-like condition in which I feel connected to, even inside of, whatever I am working on, but feeling in flow while painting is a magical experience. 

Collect Bean: Are there any artists or movements that have inspired or influenced your work? 

Aliza Stone Howard: Although I loved making art from a young age, I ultimately learned how to paint in college. I had some amazing, life-changing painting teachers, but I simultaneously learned that the art department, at large, was kind of over representational painting and instead favored conceptual art. At the time, I felt I needed special permission to pursue my newly developed practice of painting human faces. As I began to pay more attention to contemporary art, I came across the portrait rockstars of that moment: Lisa Yuskavage, Elizabeth Peyton, John Currin, and Richard Phillips. They exemplified at exactly the right time for me what it could look like to make relevant and contemporary figurative paintings. Yuskavage remains one of my favorite artists. I was grateful that her work invited me early on into this unabashedly feminine painting world and typified a confluence of technical mastery and humor that definitely still impacts me. 

Collect Bean: If you had to describe your work in only three words, what would they be? 

Aliza Stone Howard: Emotional, honest, fun.