About MoniKa
Artist. DJ. Founder.
Starling World exists because one life was too full to fit inside one box.
I'm MoniKa Starling — painter, singer, DJ, and the person behind this brand. I make things because something in me won't stop reaching: toward the canvas, the mic, the turntable, the page. I'm based in Los Angeles. I've performed across the US and internationally. And somewhere between the studio and the stage, I built Starling World as the single place where all of it lives.
Why I Make This
Art
The painting started as a private conversation. I was sitting with feelings that didn't have clean language yet — about what it means to be a woman, what gets taken, what gets kept, what we carry alone in the dark.
“Insomnia” came out of those 3am hours when the mind refuses to quiet. It’s a woman, awake, held inside her own silence. “Loss of Innocence” came from grief — the specific grief of watching something pure get reshaped by the world before it’s ready. These weren’t concepts I planned. They arrived, and I painted my way through them.
“Happy” surprised me. It looked simple on the surface — color, light, a face open to the room. But simple is its own kind of discipline. I had to earn that one.
“Girls Night” came from a different instinct: solidarity. Women together, unguarded, held by each other. That painting is the visual version of what I feel when I’m DJing a room full of women who finally let go.
The music and the painting aren’t two separate careers. They’re the same impulse — to hold something true, give it form, and offer it to someone who needs it. Starling World became the home where both practices could speak to each other without one having to justify itself to the other.
The Products
People assume the products came after the art, as a way to make money off it. It's the other way around. I've always made things with my hands — that's the actual throughline, not "painter" or "designer." Canvas, cosmetics, patent leather, cut-and-sewn cotton — different materials asking the same question: does this feel true, or does it feel like everyone else's version of the thing?
Pretty Kolors Cosmetics exists because I got tired of choosing between color and shine mid-set. A DJ doesn't get a touch-up break. So the first drop is dual-ended on purpose — full pigment on one end, gloss on the other, one product doing the job of two so I can go from soundcheck to stage without stopping. It's tested the way I actually live, not the way a counter display assumes a customer lives.
The Starling World Wireless Headphones came from the same problem from the other direction — I needed a pair that could survive a real booth, not a studio photo. Matte finish, gold wingmark across the headband, built for the hours a working DJ actually puts in. They're mine because I designed them for my own ears first.
The First Edition Starling Handbag is where the craftsmanship argument matters most to me. Cruelty-free patent leather vinyl, hand-finished with the wingmark in polished chrome, three styles and three colors, made in a run this small on purpose. Not because scarcity is a marketing lever — because I don't believe in producing more of something just to produce more. A painting is one of one because that's honest to how it was made. A first-edition run is the closest an object gets to that same honesty.
The apparel — the hoodies, the tees, the wingmark carried down a sleeve — is cut, printed, and handmade with premium, wear-resistant fabric that's meant to be worn hard, on stage and off it, not preserved in a closet. And the wingmark itself isn't a logo I licensed from a design house. It's the same mark I paint into the corner of a canvas, the same shape I sign a piece with. Put on a Starling World hoodie and you're wearing the exact symbol hanging on a collector's wall. One mark, two mediums, no difference in how seriously I take either one.
Even the smaller pieces carry the same standard — the art throw blanket wrapped in "Happy," the shoes, the earlier one-of-a-kind face masks — nothing sitting in the catalog because a trend demanded it. Everything is there because I wanted to hold it, wear it, or use it, and couldn't find the version I was imagining anywhere else.
None of this is merch. It's the wearable, usable edge of the same world the paintings and the music come from — designed in LA, tested on stage, made in small enough runs that quality never has to compete with volume. If a painting is where I say something true on canvas, the products are where that same standard has to survive contact with the real world: sweat, travel, a full night behind the decks. Everything I put my name on has to earn its place there.
What You Can Collect
The originals are one-of-one paintings — acrylic, mixed media, brush pen on canvas. They go on walls and stay. If you’re starting here, the signed prints run from $20 and carry the same imagery in a format that fits any space and most budgets. The limited objects — the book, the blanket, the handbag — are made in small runs and don’t come back once they’re gone. And the music is available on all platforms: original songs, DJ mixes, performances captured live. You can collect a painting and stream the set I played the same weekend I finished it. That’s the idea. One world, multiple entry points.
Beyond the Studio
As Creative Director at Best Sound LA, I curate live music experiences — 300+ events across 30+ markets. I’ve built rooms where the sound does something to people. I’ve watched what happens when the right song hits the right crowd at exactly the right moment. That awareness lives inside my paintings. When I’m working on a piece about solidarity or intimacy, I’m thinking about the energy inside a room full of people who came to feel something together. The stage and the canvas are asking the same question. How do we make the invisible visible?
As Seen In
Yahoo Finance named me “World Famous DJ and Singer MoniKa Starling” — I’ll let that line do its own work.
Come In
Everything here was made for you to find, keep, and return to.
— MoniKa
Start Here
Shop Original Art · Shop Prints from $20 · Listen to MoniKa on Spotify
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