Rising Stars: Meet Shaina Trumpf of Beverly Hills

Today we’d like to introduce you to Shaina Trumpf.

Hi Shaina, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Born and raised in Orange County, California, I spent my adolescent years enjoying the beach, bonfires with friends, and the sunny California weather. After graduating from high school, I took a year off to travel, where I discovered a passion for designing candles, dreamcatchers, and jewelry. At 18, I launched my first company, Sea Change, and successfully placed my handmade items in over eight stores across Orange County. I then started making up-cycled high-end children’s clothing. My children’s jackets later landed me an exclusive contract with a boutique near Laguna Beach, which housed many of my products until I moved to Los Angeles.

After a successful year in business, I pursued formal education in business and fashion, attending college for nearly two years. During this time, I was offered a modeling contract in Los Angeles, where I worked with numerous brands, including L’Oréal, Apple, Sonos, Ulta Beauty, and Dita Sunglasses, which were displayed in Sunglass Hut at the Beverly Center. My modeling work has also been featured in Vogue Italia, Elle Magazine, Salon Magazine, Flaunt Magazine, and various other print and digital publishing magazines.

Following my time in LA, I moved to New York City, where I achieved my dream of walking in New York Fashion Week and was taking meetings with big modeling agencies to stay in New York indefinitely.

When the pandemic hit, I returned to California to be closer to family. During this period, I reconnected with my creative roots, starting my first major art project, 1156. Within 90 days, I transformed the walls of a Bel Air home with my artwork, sparking opportunities to create art for homes, stores, and restaurants throughout California.

By 2021, my art was creating buzz, leading to invitations to showcase in prestigious galleries. My first exhibit was in June that year at BG Gallery in Santa Monica, only a year after starting to paint professionally. I sold a piece to a well-known child actor turned art collector. Within a month, I had three more exhibits planned, including one on July 4th in my hometown at Lagunaart.com Gallery, where I reconnected with friends and neighbors and got a local reality star to come see my work. He helped put Laguna Beach on the map for millions of people in the early 2000s, and there he stood with me, admiring my newest artwork displayed on the walls above. Days later, I went international with my first exhibit in Milan, Italy, after a curator discovered my work on Instagram. Showing my art in Milan, next to the cathedral in that ancient city, a newfound passion for art made its first appearance outside America.

Following my successful Italian showing, a pop-up gallery near Rodeo Drive invited me to co-host an exhibit in Beverly Hills, where about 20 pieces of my art were shown in the heart of Beverly Hills. Which landed me a commissioned painting opportunity from the well known, creator of Bitmoji a prominent tech entrepreneur. Exhausted but inspired as the summer was coming to an end, I had started to get a great collection of collectors interested in my work. It was September when I discovered digital art and NFTs, transforming my real-life art into digital pieces. By December 2021, I showcased my digital art at the S.L.S Hotel for Art Basel and for a private yacht exhibit in the same week.

In 2022, I launched my first collection of clothing and accessories inspired by my art, successfully placing my designs in stores across Los Angeles, including two on Melrose and two on Abbot Kinney. Grateful for all the support, the one I felt most excited about was Principessa, the perfectly designed hidden gem on Abbot Kinney. At the same time, I was selling my art around the world, even though I had taken a bit of time off to focus on my clothing line.It was all worth it when I did my first pop-up clothing event on Melrose, right next to Melrose Place. It was a Halloween event, and the energy was electric. My art was hanging on the right side of the street at a well-known breakfast spot called Croft Alley—another hidden gem tucked beside Alfred Coffee. On the left side was the posh boutique House of CB, whose window displays mirrored my own clothing and artwork. In the middle was my moment to shine on the iconic street. The well known area the world had spotlighted it in media movies and television throughout the years. In that moment, it felt like I was living my own fashion-forward version of Melrose Place—but redefined through art, style, and perseverance.

A few months later at the beginning of 2023, I opened a boutique/ art gallery for myself in Los Angeles where all my art and fashion creations had found a unique little showroom. Where they sold for about a year. I later closed the store to focus on redeveloping and reinventing myself through a more digital presence in 2024.

Currently, I am undergoing a transformational rebrand while focusing on my love for digital art and story telling through publishing a few books. Since September of 2024 I have published three books and am working on my fourth. I have published two children’s books on Amazon titled A.B.C.s Cyber Jungle first edition an interactive coloring book and the other is the artist edition titled Life in Color: A.B.C.s Cyber Jungle, which both emphasizes education and development through coloring and tracing letters. I created a lighthearted collection of line art animal sketches for this children’s book, integrating a digital cyber element shown on the front and back cover. I’ve launched a matching clothing collection on my website, www.shainaworld.com, to complement my A.B.C.s coloring book along with the Cyber Jungle Book series I am working on developing ongoing that is my biggest passion project right now.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
When I began my art career, it happened so fast, the attention and sales I was getting made me think, “Wow, this is going to be easy. My art is going to blow up.” That thought, however, was shattered by one devastating betrayal by a former friend and boss. I have never publicly talked about the biggest heartbreak of my career, an event that seriously derailed me and my art for years. The pain I still feel even writing this makes it seem fresh and burning.

I used to work as a personal assistant for a so-called realtor who is an independent contractor for a highly prominent real estate agency with a prestigious correlation to Rodeo Drive located blocks away from the iconic street which its name is inspired by. He was well-known in the city for his love of gossiping and partying, which earned him a reputation as a social butterfly with many powerful friends. When I first met him I had basically just moved to L.A and being new to the area, I thought I was lucky to work for someone who seemed so kind, connected, and protective of my interests someone who has actually got my back. Oh how wrong I was.

Today, I am here to tell you the truth of my art, and my perspective of how it was vandalized and disrespected.

Right after my Beverly Hills exhibit on beverly drive at a quaint pop up gallery, I received a call from this realtor, who told me he was representing the sale of an $87,777,777 million mega-mansion built by a prestigious celebrity plastic surgeon. Lets just call the mansion “777” for short. He wanted to stage my art all over the home and promised that, when the home sold, my paintings would be sold along with it. I was told I’d make $5,000 to $10,000 for each painting, with room for about 15 pieces. A year and a half into my career, I thought this was the opportunity of a lifetime—my big break. It seemed almost too good to be true and that’s because it was.

A kind artist I knew warned me that I needed a contract and even gave me a template for the owner to sign. I made a copy and handed it to the owner, who agreed and said he’d take it, sign it, and give it back. For now, he said, he was just excited to hang my art in his luxurious Bel Air home. This house was incredibly lavish, with gold imbedded in the flooring of the mansion, a secret D.J booth in the center, and a view more breathtaking than I’d ever seen, even on TV. My ex-boss assured me everything would be fine, and I trusted him. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I had just been invited to showcase at my first Art Basel at the S.L.S Hotel in Miami, and now this. I thought it was my moment.

Things started to unravel over the next few months. I heard rumors about the mansion’s controversial past and the enormous financial risks the owner had taken on with the property according to friends in his inner circle. Matters took a darker turn as I heard talks about escalating drug use and wild parties at “777” At first, I brushed it off as just “Typical for LA ,” not really my business. I was really busy selling my paintings and also preparing for Basel Miami. My underlining concerns were pushed to the back of my head until Christmas. A client wanted to buy one of the paintings for his new home. It happened to be one being staged at the Bel Air mega mansion, so I reached out to my former boss. He invited me to dinner to talk about it while at the restaurant with a mutual friend I asked the realtor about the house sale, hoping to retrieve the painting since the house hadn’t sold yet to my knowledge. The realtor admitted the sale was moving slower than the owner had hoped. In his words he told me the surgeon thought it was due to the art not being gold enough to match the floor and joked that the owner thought the art needed “more gold” to showcase the true extravagance of his creation. Said developer had even took it upon himself to adjust this by added 24k gold paint to my paintings in hopes to help make the house sell faster. He laughed about it, saying he’d added “some small gold details.” to a few of my pieces. He was always joking, so I didn’t know if I should take it seriously thinking he was just trying to mess with me it couldn’t be true.

I asked him what he meant by “small details,” but he just shrugged it off, saying, “You won’t even notice. Everything’s fine.” I trusted him. But days later, my uneasiness grew. Finally, the truth came out. I want to add a disclaimer I didn’t know said doctor very well and was not at the house when my paintings were destroyed and do not know the full truth of the matter but sources close to him i.e said relator and broker told me this. Apparently in a drug-fueled rage, the owner—about to declare bankruptcy and lose the house had decided it needed “lots more gold” to increase its value to justice cost of his property evaluation so he wouldn’t be under water with his investment. He reportedly started by buying 24k gold paint and applied it to a large sculpture in the house. But that wasn’t effective enough in his mind; so he turned to my paintings next. Why he targeted mine, I still don’t know, as I’d only interacted with him a few times, each one pleasant in my opinion. I suspect it was because I was the least established artist staging in the house, an easy target knowing he never signed the contract, I really wish I would have been more pushy in getting that contract back but I was nervous and a bit intimidated, thinking I might bother the developer and lose my chance to stage and sell. That hesitation taught me a very hard lesson I’ll never forget. Sometimes, second-guessing yourself can cost you a even bigger opportunity. I share this so others can learn from it too: don’t let fear keep you from showing up, speaking up, or going after what you’ve worked so hard for.

I can’t even begin to describe the hurt I feel sharing this. Knowing that people I trusted saw me and my art as worthless, something they could defile, is devastating without consequence. My art is literally my soul on canvas, and to have it treated like this broke something deep inside me. To this day, I feel ashamed that I trusted people like that who cared so little for me and my work. I received photos and a confession via text from the realtor. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing 5 paintings destroyed two almost unrecognizable. Worse, I didn’t know the fate of my other paintings.

I went to the police, but they told me it was a civil matter and they couldn’t help me. Eventually, I was able to retrieve a few of my paintings, including the ones that were destroyed, but some paintings were still missing, including a custom, hand-painted Chanel bag. I later found out the developer was filing for bankruptcy and I couldn’t even sue him for damages. I reported the realtor that stood by and took pictures of the art being destroyed the same one that laughed at me and would constantly make unwanted sexual advances to me. The amount of people who told me that he was going around the city telling people I was his girlfriend I find highly disturbing and very unprofessional because our relationship was purely platonic on every professional level. Honestly, he grosses me out and I felt very manipulated while I worked for him. When I reported him for his unprofessionalism to the real estate agency that he’s an independent contractor at his manager the manager told me he would talk to him and I felt like that was just a nice way of blowing me off. That the proof I provided him, that was highly unethical and violated agency protocol and the realtor code of ethics was no big deal. Talking to the realtors manager felt useless and he wasn’t taking the matter serious enough. I know said former boss was going to behave unethically again, according to the law there are ethics that professionals within real estate industry need to uphold to keep their licensing. These ethics and protocol are there to protect vulnerable people such as I was in this exploitation case where my art was vandalized. I felt it was said managers responsibility to take this matter a little more serious not just brush it off to protect people who he favored in their company regardless of company morals and ethics. Not just act unethically and what happened later on was absolutely what I was talking about and trying to avoid by reaching out to said real estate agency. This ate at my soul for a while and I tried to distance myself from my manipulative former employer but he would text me pictures of him outside my apartment when I wasn’t home and keep inviting me to party and go to dinners with him, and shortly after contacting his boss about his employe, I had a break-in at my residence along with death threats coming from anonymous numbers telling me, “How dare you contact his work about the destruction of your shitty art that doesn’t matter anyways,” telling me to “disappear or else” very scary and threatening things like “you’re playing with fire and you will get burned” implying something may happen to me if I continue to speak the truth. This is a typical example of abuse of power from a man who is being put on blast for misconduct and the people around him trying to protect their own self interests, so he tried to silence and intimidate me. I am not that easily shaken and will not stand for this type of abusive behavior any longer. I will not be your punching bag anymore as you slander my name around the city and hurt my career any longer because I am speaking the truth about your fragile ego and how I rejected you so you allowed my property to be destroyed in failed attempt to make me feel less than my worth. This stops now.

At the time this all originally happened, I was left with destroyed paintings, missing pieces, and a feeling of emptiness and betrayal. This ordeal affected me deeply, draining my ambition to paint and pursue my art career which I still have not recovered fully from this.

It happened at the height of my artistic journey up to that point, it felt like I had fallen from the Himalayas to the dirt below. I didn’t paint for a almost a year after that. I gave up my art studio, and to add to my despair, my family was going through its own turmoil. My parents sold my childhood home due to covid aftermath, and my sister I was closest to moved primarily to Europe. It was just too much to handle all at once, and I spiraled for months, unable to numb the pain. This experience nearly destroyed me from within. I became withdrawn and decided to isolate myself, not knowing who to trust anymore.

Giving up wasn’t an option, and I decided not to stop but to pivot toward my original love of fashion and clothing design, now with my art as the heart of my first official collection I named Atomic.

I created this collection in what was one of the most challenging parts of my life, still overcoming the beginning of the same year. I had stopped trying to sell my paintings and got a day job while designing my new collection. At the same time, I was doing an internship for a haute couture designer within walking distance from the factory where I was creating my new streetwear collection. I had never worked so hard in my life, but it was all worth it when I did my first pop-up event near Melrose Place months later. It was at a beautiful boutique whose young owner, Anna had believed in me and let me do a Halloween event for her newly opened Posh Boutique called Toward.

She gave me full creative freedom to design the pop-up, which included bringing my art for its first showing since the mega-mansion disaster. That moment gave me hope again, seeing my paintings out on display for everyone to see. I started painting again within days, and about a year later, I was invited to do a show in New York, which meant I had officially showcased my work across the country in three of the main cities in the U.S. I thought, what better painting to showcase than a survivor of the Bel Air house vandalism. In a very strange way, I felt like showing my painting in Tribeca would have had less of an emotional experience and would have made it a different experience if I hadn’t gone through what I did the year before. Seeing it in that N.Y.C gallery almost made me feel like it was worth suffering for my art to have its big moment in a city I love so dearly.

Those paintings now are by far the most expensive paintings I have in my portfolio because of the lesson they taught me and the experience I went through. The setback and the ultimate success of overcoming such a traumatic experience was one of the most prolific experiences in all of my career and the direction in which my life changed. Every time I see them a constant reminder of it’s exponential value every day every a bit more seeing them reminds me to be better be smarter and be more careful with my decisions and how i hope sharing my story helps other artist prevent such a travesty in their life and empowers them to speak up and not to be intimidated even by those who abuse their powers and try to silence them at all coast.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
There I was young and just stepping into my career when I finally felt like I had found what I was put on this earth to do: create.

I became known for my one-eyed cubist portraits, with a touch of Picasso’s influence. Maybe I had a slight advantage from knowing people through my modeling work, but I also came into the art world a little differently. My first studio wasn’t in some quiet, private space it was in a cute one story house in Bel Air, with people constantly coming in and out. My early creations were made publicly, in front of friends, visitors, and strangers. Looking back, I think that gave me a lot of confidence. It felt a bit like modeling but this time, with paint and canvas as the medium.

A lot of people, even strangers, really connected with my work. I remember clearly I started painting in June 2020, and by July, a kind woman living in San Francisco reached out to commission my first piece. From that moment on, I knew this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

Every month after that, one or two more commissions came in from friends, from strangers, even through Instagram. The art was literally selling off the walls of that Bel Air house. That experience shaped me. It taught me to be adaptable, to grow, and to keep expanding.

Something you may not know about me is this: whether or not someone likes or understands my art it doesn’t matter because if they meet me and hear my story, they wont ever say I’m not persistent. I don’t give up easily not on the things I truly care about creatively. When I set my mind to something, there’s nothing that will stop me from going after it with everything I’ve got.

From the beginning, I saw that look of surprise in people’s eyes those who watched me start and never imagined I’d keep going. Maybe they thought it was just a hobby I picked up during lockdown. But it’s so much more than that.

There’s nothing else in this world I want more than to create art that makes a difference.

What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
The most important thing I’ve learned is to be careful with who I put my trust in. Words can sound grand promises can sparkle like stars in your eyes but they often turn out empty when you’re surrounded by the wrong kind of people.

I used to think exploitation mostly happened in music, acting, or modeling. And to be honest, I felt lucky when I was modeling I always had an agent or manager acting as a buffer against that kind of cruelty. I’d hear the stories, but I was a bit protected.

Art was a different story. I was completely unprepared. My enthusiasm and love for this newfound talent clouded my judgment. I didn’t see the negative forces surrounding my rise. Opportunities disguised as friendships… people using me as a sideshow to whatever dark intentions hid behind their eyes.

It was a hard lesson one that slowly ate at my soul. I was left spiritually, emotionally, and creatively dead inside. I stayed quiet, not out of shame but out of fear — fear of being dead to this city, of being shut out for good. But I promise you: not even death could feel as painful as living with this burden gnawing inside my head.

When you’re not from here, when your family isn’t “someone” or used to be, but isn’t anymore or they just are too self centered to help you and just want to take from you. You’re really on your own and when you’re just trying to make a name for yourself, you learn fast to fear saying anything that might upset the powerful people who control everything.

But here’s the truth: what’s more powerful than intimidation is the voice of truth. I thought staying silent would protect my career but it nearly destroyed me. It crushed my spirit.

Finding your voice as an artist is one of the most powerful things you can do. It helps you survive, keep going, and rise above it all. That’s why I’m sharing this for every artist just starting out in any field. Consider this a warning: be careful who you trust but never let that harden your soul from finding friends an creating wonderful memories along the way. Just never let silence become your protection from fear.

Silence is a new form of artistic death.

Never be afraid to speak your truth. Nothing hurts more than killing hope for a brighter future. You may try to hurt me, but you will never kill my spirit again.

I’m not afraid of anyone or anything — except failure.

Pricing:

• $1,500: sketches/ small paintings
• $2,500-5,000: sculptures/ medium paintings
• $10,000- 100,000: oversize sculptures/ large paintings
• 250,000: full home decorating
• 1,000,000: “777 Collection” destroyed mega mansion art disaster paintings

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.shainaworld.com
• Instagram: @shainaworldofficial