Aleah Rae Art
Aleah Rae is a California based artist who celebrates everyday people and the quiet poetry of their lives. With a background in acting and an MFA from NYU, her lifelong fascination with character, nuance, and personal stories informs every brushstroke.
Her work is deeply rooted in memory — not just nostalgia, but the living texture of personal histories, the quirks we inherit, the objects we hold sacred, and the unspoken strength passed down through generations. Inspired by the bold matriarchs in her family and the tender moments that often go unnoticed, Aleah’s art honors what is ordinary and renders it extraordinary.
Introduced to painting by her grandmother’s watercolors, she has always been drawn to the small details that make people who they are — the items we cherish, the gestures we repeat, the stories we tell only to those who listen closely. In her work, memory becomes myth, and the unsung are framed in vivid color as icons of their own lives.
That Girl Series
That Girl is a love letter to the women who raised me.
This ongoing series reimagines my grandmothers and great aunt Martha — the matriarchs of my family — in bold, intimate, and often glamorous scenarios. As a child, they were the first women I saw as iconic. They were funny, strong, complex, and quietly heroic in ways that shaped how I see womanhood and power.
Each painting transforms memory into mythology, placing these women at the center of richly symbolic scenes that reflect their personalities, histories, and the small but profound details I associate with them — a floral shirt, a martini glass, a Life Alert bracelet. Through acrylic and imagination, I explore the tension between who they were in life and who they’ve become in memory — timeless, extraordinary, and fiercely themselves.
That Girl honors everyday women who may never have been famous, but who lived boldly, loved deeply, and became legends in the lives of the people who knew them.