ROBERT PIERCE

   • Leader & Times

A Kansas native, Rachel Hirt grew up near Augusta and was homeschooled from preschool through high school before attending Butler Community College.

In her youth, she developed a love for art, which she studied at Butler. She attended the school on a work scholarship in the art department.

“I had a lot of experience helping in the gallery and helping my teachers with whatever they needed, and I was very much submersed in the art world there,” she said.

After graduating, Hirt got married in August 2014, and she and her husband moved to Liberal, where they lived for nearly two years before moving back to her husband’s hometown of Sawyer near Pratt.

The couple has been in Sawyer since, and as Hirt was adjusting to married life, art got put on the back burner for a short time.

“He was in children’s ministry,” she said. “Therefore, we were both in children’s ministry. I worked as well, and I just didn’t think I had the time for it.”

After having three children and beginning their homeschooling, though, Hirt said she made the decision to make time for art. After homeschooling the children most of the week, her mother-in-law gives her a break from the kids one day a week to allow Hirt to concentrate on painting.

Hirt said painting has been a life giving experience for her.

“It’s like a personal practice  of fixing my eyes on the beauty around me, the positive as well as creating the beauty I want to see in the world around me,” she said. “That’s what inspires a lot of what I make. I am hoping as I make those and as I’m creating those little windows of hope and joy, other people are inspired and find the beauty in that as well.”

Much of Hirt’s passion for art comes from her mother, who also studied art at Butler.

“She always, in our homeschooling, made sure we had it available to us, and I was drawn to it over and over again,” she said. “She taught it at our homeschool coop as well. It was something I just naturally gravitated towards.”

Most of Hirt’s work are oil paintings she called atmospheric, nostalgic and inspirational.

“I do artwork inspired by nature – birds, landscapes, florals,” she said. “I’m definitely inspired by nature. I love to be out in nature. I’ll definitely take reference photos for my landscapes whenever I’m out in nature. It’s easy to fix our eyes on the negative. It’s around us constantly.”

For Hirt, art is about creating something beautiful that causes her to pause and fix her days on.

“That is inspiring, and that is joy filled instead of gravitating toward the negative. I was that way for a very long time,” she said.

Asked what her definition of art is, Hirt said it is simply creating the future she would like to see.

“Also, I think art is about connecting with the Creator and mirroring His character,” she said.

Hirt recently displayed some of art in an exhibit at Liberal’s Baker Arts Center, one of the first exhibits of her young career.

“I’m just beginning my actual career in art,” she said. “I feel I’ve been working towards this.”

Hirt said the artwork she displayed at Baker Arts was very representative of her collection as a whole.

“I have several small landscapes in the exhibit,” she said. “I love making the little landscapes. They’re very dreamy. They’re inspired a lot of times by an actual place, and I add other dreamlike elements to them. Abstract landscapes is what I call them. I have some paintings from my ‘Taking Flight’ series. It’s birds pictured in different beautiful settings, abstracted settings, as well as some small pieces that are of butterflies. They’re finding my wings. It’s representative of our different stages in life and how we can go through change just like a butterfly.”

Hirt had three other shows in 2026, including one in September at Wichita’s three-day outdoor Autumn and Art Fair at the Bradley Fair Shopping Center, and she already has one show booked for 2027 as she launches into her career in art.

Hirt said she still considers herself a full-time mom and a part-time artist.

“I love it,” she said. “I’m always thinking, musing in my mind, but the actual painting and the actual work is very much still part time.”

Hirt said her experience at Baker Arts was a great one, and she very much enjoyed working with Director Misty Martin, as well as letting her children help with putting the display up in the gallery.

“I loved bringing my kids to drop off the artwork,” Hirt said. “They got to immerse and play in the experience and see what that was like for them and join in the creative process.”