This month, I am really excited to present Megan Alexander, a fashion artist and illustrator on an incredible creative roll and who is definitely one to watch. Read below and visit the ArULTRA website to find out more.

Bea Santos, ArtULTRA's associate, researcher, and artist in her own right, shares with us her musings about success in the arts and attempts to define it for us.

ARTIST FEATURE: MEGAN ALEXANDER

Balenciaga and Philip Treacy by Megan Alexander

Inspired by the craftsmanship and artistry of haute couture fashion, Megan translates fashion imagery into her own dextrous and sensuous painterly style. The result is beautifully composed fashion close-ups rendered in subtle tones of ink and watercolour, often making use of Megan’s signature golden ink. 

This month, we are featuring across the ArtULTRA platforms artworks that Megan made in the past year and a half, a period when she experienced a burst of creativity. Megan’s paintings are personal investigations into fascinating details and accessories: from a Schiaparelli earring and Philip Treacy hats to a particular model’s neckline or the placement of fabrics. 

So visit the ArtULTRA website and our Instagram @artultra_net to view Megan's incredible artworks. To explore further, visit Megan’s Instagram or website: www.meganillustrator.com.

WHAT DOES SUCCESS LOOK LIKE?

Sooner or later, if you take making art (even a little) seriously, you probably will find yourself caring about being “successful.” But before you launch into any self-congratulating or self-lambasting, it might be helpful to ditch the ‘pass or fail’ mentality inherited from the countless tests we all have had to undertake from a young age. 

Instead, I find it enriching to think about the myriad of meanings ‘successful’ has had and can have in terms of artistic achievement. I think an artist should ask themselves what successful means because it’s a valuable thing to discover - not only in terms of shaping your creative journey, but also shaping who you are as a human being. The path to success can lead almost anywhere: to becoming a principled person, a political activist, a virtuosic maker, a solemn philosopher, a joker, a wry societal critic and anything in between. Often, this involves some clever feat of self-fashioning – what nowadays we refer to as either ‘being your true self’ or ‘creating a brand.’ 

So here are some visual examples of interesting - if not a little extreme - ideas of what being a “successful” artist could mean.

Being a successful artist is to be a lonely, out of breath, with wind-tossed hair, emotionally and physically isolated from any other human being, gazing down at a sublime (beautiful, yet terrifying) reality, as in Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich shown above.

According to The Life of Pablo by Kanye West, being a successful artist is to be full of life and vitality (the colour orange), to be both a male creative genius in the image of Pablo Picasso and a Christian apostle in the image of Paul. The key is to not have to choose ‘which/one’ alter-ego or limit yourself to one persona. 

Maybe, being a successful artist is to be like Agnes Martin, shown above in portrait by Charles R. Rushton, who sat in a rocking chair in her studio for over 20 years, just sitting and rocking, waiting for inspiration to arrive. It took immense effort, fanatical purity and spiritual insight for Martin to be able to arrive at a nonrepresentational, mystical style. She was her own editor, repeatedly destroying versions of a painting until she had made a perfect iteration. 

Personally, for me, being an artist is about collaboration, stimulation of the senses and telling good stories. Originality can be a curse, and I find dialogue much more generative. What’s your idea of being a successful artist?

Bea Santos

NEW WORK AT THE HARI

Earlier this week, we installed two new artworks for Emmanuel Unaji at The Hari, following his residency there. Here's a short video of the installation. 

Find out more about the residency at The Hari and the two resident artists, Emmanuel Unaji and Matilde Merli. It is worth noting that the incredible work they created during their residency is now available for sale. A link to the exhibition brochure with all the relevant information is included below.

ArtULTRA OPPORTUNITIES DATABASE

Last but not least, don’t forget to check out the ArtULTRA’s opportunity database every so often. We regularly upload opportunities there, and the unmissable ones are on the website’s homepage.