Today we’d like to introduce you to Mykaela Bajari.
Hi Mykaela, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’ve been creating art for as long as I can remember, but for much of my life, it was a personal, private practice—something I did for myself or to build community rather than as a serious pursuit. One of my closest childhood friends, Claire Rice, has always pushed me to share and expand my work. She introduced me to Rob Prior, whom I now apprentice for. They helped me see art as something I could pursue more deeply and publicly. Despite my passion for art, I was self taught. I didn’t study it formally at UCLA. Instead, I focused on research in dyslexia, educational gaps, and health disparities. My artistic process is deeply influenced by these experiences, particularly the injustices within the education system. I hope to work in a space that supports education reform, ensuring better access to learning that meets community needs. I believe the arts have the profound power to shape institutions and enhance education.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
In today’s world of social media and endless inspiration, it can feel like everything has already been mastered and explored. My biggest challenge is stepping outside my own pride and expectations to focus on the ideas I want to express while embracing the beautiful influence of the art that surrounds us. Importantly, regardless of success, the impact that process of creating has on me and the potential that process has to impact others keeps me grounded. Additionally, I have also experienced a lot of death recently, most significantly my dad passed away last year. This sent me straight into a mess of feelings because in the end I did not have a great relationship with him. I experienced a wonderful dad at the beginning of my life and I experienced his slow confusing decline and distancing from my family. As many have had to do before me, I’ve been trying to capture the multiple truths that exist between the lines of relationships in my work. Holding grief, pain, love, conflicting memories, a lack of resolutions all in the same hand. Because many human things can be true at the same time.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I specialize in realism using gouache, acrylic, and oil pastels, creating paintings that tell multiple stories at once. My work is known for its vibrant colors and just the right amount of oddness—enough to keep things intriguing and open to interpretation.
I like to tap into emotions, those small but powerful feelings that linger in the back of our minds. That’s why color is so important to me—it’s like music on paper. It draws us in, sets the mood, creates contrast, and evokes warmth, coldness, softness—familiar sensations that can feel both subtle and profound.
I try to remind myself to “live into your whims and get lost in them. Lean into learning from other people’s stories to inform your own.”
At its core, my work is driven by storytelling, community, and the feeling of standing at the edge of something transformative. I believe art, education, literature, and science all feed into one another, shaping the way we experience the world. My goal is to keep evolving—both in my craft and in my connection with the communities that inspire it.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Risks are so important, yet really difficult for me—especially financial risks. I love independence, I love security, and I am deeply afraid of embarrassment, failure, and missing the mark. Risks expose us to failure. But I know I will fail, so I want to fail in the right direction. Failing is one of the best ways to learn, and creating art helps rewire this part of my brain because it requires trusting the process and myself. My art looks terrible for most of the process—but that’s when I get to experiment, see what’s working, lean into what I enjoy, and often, it transforms into something I’m pleased with in one way or another.
This is one reason I believe the arts can have a profound impact, especially in American education. We are so ashamed of failure and not immediately excelling at something, but our brains are plastic, and our social norms can be reshaped. We need to relearn to fail, to trust the process, or simply to enjoy making art can train our focus on something we weren’t originally confident in—and that shift is powerful. It helps us trust ourselves and find ways that work for us as individuals to learn.
Entering the art world has humbled me, it has strengthened my sense of self, it has at times also deluded my sense of self but it is a process of trying to work out a tangle of ideas and questions that I come into conflict with. It is a study of collective experiences.
Pricing:
- I sell art at different rates and I want to make my art accessible while still honoring my work.
- I have versions of art under 50$ and versions in the thousands
- Commissions depend on the project type
- I sell prints for 10 – 20$
- I also teach process art among other forms for kids as young as 3. I can do classes or private lessons.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/art.bajari/
