Her 'Art At The Afters' Became an Unexpected Hit. Now, She's Eyeing Art Basel
It started as a post-partying hangout. Now, Stevie Alger is living her dreams during the times she used to fear.
THE RED DOOR swings open and, instantly, you are transported from the quiet of a cool West Hollywood summer evening and into Stevie Alger’s colorful world of “Art At The Afters.”
The 29-year-old native Australian’s living room is crowded with dozens of paintings and canvases in all colors and sizes, with some commissions already wrapped and signed, (1 of 1) by Stevie Alger. Considering the former swimwear model’s slight build, her volume of work seems colossal. Yet, it’s Alger’s tomboyish charm, an endearing energetic mixture of self-belief and disarming humility, that occupies the most space in the room.
“I’ve never thought I’m good at it, but I’m just confident in it,” Alger says, whipping paints together in a cup while seated on the floor as she works on a piece beyond the midnight hour. “I’m not living to impress anyone else. Like, it’s art! Let me just paint, bro, you know?”
One night, her living room TV is grooving ‘80’s disco; on another, it’s thumping house DJ festival sets. The couch seats an ever-changing cast of characters — creatives, entrepreneurs, and professionals all navigating the chaos and pressures of Hollywood hustle.
The constant is Alger, who’s built her own community of Los Angeles’ nightlife scene — as varied as the assortment of colors on her palette — by creating a space where art is the social glue.
“I just chill, I just zone out, and I just… I just can be me for a second,” Alger says of having people over as she paints. She admits that it still “feels weird” that people are impressed with her work. She spreads pinks, blues, and yellows across a canvas as she further reveals a humbling self-perception, likening her plaudits to celebrating someone who jumps rope for fun. “I don’t have to try for anything. It’s not like I’m a singer who has to try to do a good song. Like, maybe we all can do this.”
STEVIE ALGER IS delightfully comfortable in her own skin. That self-comfort anchors the freedom she paints with. Her style is influenced by abstractionism and expressionism, but when asked to define it herself, she scoffs at the idea of conformity. “I think someone asked me that early on,” she says, “and I was like, ‘Can I just be me?’ Like, why does art have to be this category of a certain type of painting? To me, it’s boring and it boxes you in.”
It’s 1:28 a.m. as she works on a faceless painting — the pinks, yellows and blues now coating the bottom and midsection of the canvas, with blobs of teal, olive green, violet, and titanium white all fixed where a face will eventually be. By 2:29 a.m., the piece is lying on its left side, the blobs neatly blending into a psychedelic mix.
“Honestly, just not giving a fuck, that’s my symbolism,” Alger says, her down-to-earth tone balancing the candidness of her words. “I don’t have a plan. I just do it.”
For many who have stared at a blank canvas before, that sentiment is relatable; for those more precious about process, it’s a potential demerit. Somewhat in defiance of her own independent nature, there are self-mandated principles that Alger, who’s now reading a mini manifesto off her iPhone, will follow. She will not make boring art or art that tries too hard. She will make art that makes people think, feel, and talk. And, she will “release my inner weirdo.”
“The work that survives,” she declares, “is either unforgettable or deeply human. And mine will be both.”
The reasoning for Alger’s approach, however, goes even deeper.
“I have night terrors, like, every night,” she explains. “I’ve always had real bad nightmares my whole life. It’s faces. I could watch dragons or zombies or aliens, it doesn’t scare me. But if it’s a person’s face, that’ll stick with me, and they stick for months.” Growing up, among the scariest were Green Goblin from Spider-Man and Dobby from Harry Potter. She tried combatting this fear by hanging dreamcatchers in her bedroom.
“My friend was like, ‘Stevie, do you think that you paint faceless faces because they haunt you?’” she recalls. “And I was like, ‘Holy shit! Maybe, like, subconsciously.’ I didn’t even know I was doing it, you know?”
Painting is a form of therapy for Alger, who hails from the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. Growing up, she’d often sit in corners and paint. “I’ve always been a creative person,” she says. “I don’t know, I just found peace in it. I don’t really know why.”
Alger remembers winning a painting contest when she was 7, and painting in a little gallery after school. As a teenager, while attending high school in Strasbourg, France, she’d make classmates personalized graffiti pieces, scribbling their names on canvas and using Sharpies to fill in details. “People would buy it off me,” she smiles, thinking about some of her earliest commissions. She moved to California in 2022, but, as a full-time marketing specialist, painting was only a hobby — until one night in late 2025.
It was 2 a.m. and she was back home with some friends after a night of partying. “Someone fell asleep in my room, so I tried to keep two other friends, like, entertained,” she says. “I had this canvas, and we were just talking and made these crazy little paintings.” She posted the pieces online, selling three for $50 each. The next night, she sold a handful of pieces for $100 each.
“And then,” Alger explains, “it just kept going.”
The requests rolled in — as strange as they increasingly became. Sexy Homer Simpson. Elmo on fire. A dragon. An Adderall-eating bull.
A friend gave her a bigger canvas, and she began trying bigger pieces. She shows an example of one finished product, playing a video of an L.A.-based content creator unveiling a painting Alger made of his dog. “Shout out, Stevie!” he chirps at the end.
Art At The Afters had unintentionally become its own phenomenon.
Alger’s stockpile of art supplies and radical hospitality means if you enter the red door, expect to partake in the painting, too. Phones are discouraged. “Granted, everyone’s a little bit buzzed, but everyone’s present,” Alger says, dabbing her brush into another mixing tray. “Everyone’s sitting down and chatting, and then the people who don’t want to paint, they just sit and watch, and they get mesmerized almost. Everyone says it makes them feel like a kid again.”
By March, Alger had sold over 100 pieces. She had her first-ever showing at The Continental in downtown Los Angeles in April. A vortex-like abstraction earned the most appreciation from friends and followers; the secret behind it is that she was simply messing around, painting the No. 8.
Alger hadn’t set out to rise through the fine art world, a famously insular space, so quickly. “It’s just it’s so like healing for me because I don’t really know where this is ever gonna go,” she says. “But it’s going somewhere.”
She sold her first collection and secured her first studio space in May. By June, she’d sold over 150 pieces and three more collections. In July, she joined up with a curator who’s representing her internationally, with an eye towards showing at Art Basel.
“Knowing that this could be my life, I would have followed this dream way earlier,” she says. “I’ve always suppressed it. I thought my way of getting art out was, like, going to be via marketing, graphic design. I thought, ‘painting, it seems so juvenile.’” She glides her brush across the canvas as she further reflects, recognizing the permission she’s given herself to embark on her journey.
“I just wanna be Stevie. I just wanna be seen for me and, like, me is okay,” she says. “When you’re not there to impress anyone, you end up impressing more people. I’ll never be the prettiest girl in any room, but I’ll be more fucking confident than anyone.”
STEVIE ALGER’S INSPIRATION is unplanned. Her subject matter is wide-ranging, including abstracts, solitary figures, boats, cowboys, and sports.
While she used to worry that art was too juvenile, it’s the child-like expressiveness she paints with that makes her art so compelling. She hates going into hotels and seeing plain, printed illustrations. “My stuff will never be printed, ever,” she says. “Once I make it, like, you’re gonna see the blobs on this. You’re gonna be able to touch it. And if there’s a mistake on it, I don’t even think there’s a mistake. I think that’s art.”
The definition of perfection is a perpetually moving bullseye that she’s never aspired to aim for.
“I don’t, by no means, think I’m a ‘perfect’ person,” she says. “It’s a bit of a funny word. But I think it’s just, like, being unapologetically you.”
That courage is why, as the clock reads well after 4 a.m., here she is surrounded by friends, experiencing her dreams at the times she used to fight nightmares. In her marketing work, she’s solo. “When I go out at night, I’m a social butterfly,” she explains. “I want to talk to people. I want to hang out because they’re joining my team.” Her team of supporters has helped propel what began as a small gathering into a career that she’s genuinely enjoying.
“I swear, my life makes no sense. I have so much faith that it’s working out the way it’s meant to be,” she says. “I just think I’m going to be something because, like, I believe in myself, because there’s no way that this is happening for no reason.”
Alger once feared the night. Now, she conquers it, armed with a paintbrush, dance beats, and some late-night wanderers, in one of the biggest cities in the world — and, soon, beyond.
“I don’t think you have to die anymore to be a famous artist,” Alger says. “Art can be so much more than an artist. Why can’t it be, like, a moment? Why can’t it be just fun? As a kid, whenever you paint, it’s like, ‘Oh, let’s have some fun and paint,’ right? Why can’t it still be that? It doesn’t have to be this whole, like, intense thing.
“It can be fun and successful. And maybe that’s the art of it. Maybe the art is the moment of having all your friends together and painting, and it’s not actually the pieces. Maybe it’s the story behind them.”
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