When Mikki Alhart speaks, you can feel her smiling through the phone.
She is given to exuberant kindness and easy eagerness to share her life’s work. Alhart, the featured artist of the month for October at the Cypress Gallery in Lompoc, holds nothing back as she wildly describes her latest exhibit.
“I hung 45 pieces in that gallery,” she said. “Because my work is so eclectic, I had the abstracts and seascapes and landscapes … because that’s how I paint.”
Indeed, it is hard to define Alhart merely by a row of selected images. Sometimes, in works such as Triple Orange, she’s a gifted and kinetic abstract painter; other times, in pieces such as Peaceful Paradise or Melville Magic, she’s a traditional landscape painter. And sometimes she just paints smirking clowns floating in the sky.
“I just love to paint,” she said. “Every piece gets me so excited. I get my inspiration from everything, from a poem or a song I might hear or a beautiful scenic view.”
Alhart comes from a vibrant artistic family. Almost everyone in her family was an artist, except for her.
For 30 years, she confined her artistic inclinations to her work as a therapist. When she retired, Alhart decided to finally try her hand as an artist.
“I’ve always thought of myself as an aspiring Grandma Moses,” she said. “I didn’t get serious about art until I was 58 years old. I started out with oil and acrylic, but I diversified. I do everything from landscapes to seascapes to pop art to whimsy and fantasy.”
Even though she didn’t get started until later in life, Alhart said she always felt something special lurking inside her. She explained it in an artist’s statement accompanying her work.
“I’ve had the ability to sense color around people and I am sensitive to the feel and essence of the energy that surrounds people, places, and things,” she wrote. “The inspiration to better understand the mysteries that lie beyond normal perception is what led me to the study of auras. Every plant, animal, and human is surrounded by an electromagnetic energy field that penetrates our bodies.”
Alhart said that while the field cannot be seen, it can be sensed through vibes emitted and the energy is perceivable in color. She now works with real-time photography and bio-feedback to explore auras and chakras.
She doesn’t feel the need to be confined to one genre or media and instead prefers to let the inspiration dictate what she will create. The kinetic nature of her whim spawns her paintings, whether they are abstract interpretations of scenes or comical paintings of clowns poking fun at the viewer.
But it’s her unwavering devotion to aura reading and interpretation that guides the majority of her work.
“The universe is full of art and inspiration” Alhart said. “I am always looking to create meaning to my work. Art is the medium for the bigger message. My intention is that my paintings inspire others as I am inspired in the art of creating them.”
Arts and Lifestyle Writer Rebecca Rose’s aura is a hot ’80s neon pink. Contact her at rrose@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 19-26, 2017.