We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alexandra Winthrop a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Alexandra, thanks for joining us today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?
I’ve been on both sides of the fence between 9-to-5 jobs and creative careers, and both sides have their pros and cons. I do envy the stability and mental security provided by a salary and benefits. I miss the separation of business hours from private life, and the expectation that work life won’t bleed into my off the clock hours. Being a self employed artist means that there’s often very little boundary between your business and your free time, especially when you do any amount of creative work in your living space. I conjure illustrations where I eat my meals, spend hours meant for sleep on restocking my merchandise, and receive tattoo inquiries while shopping for groceries. My paycheck is a direct reflection of hours put in everything from formulating my art to marketing to physically hawking my wares. At the same time, my business is entirely my own. My work hours are my own to decide. I have a say in what projects I accept. My business is a facet of myself and my values.
The creative career path often means playing on hard mode, but when things fall into place, the victories feel more whole and encompassing.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’m a colored pencil illustrator and tattoo artist specializing in dark surrealism and scar cover-up tattooing. Art has been a steadfast constant in my life, as has an adoration for the gothic and grotesque in the natural world. My illustration work falls somewhere on a spectrum from “unhallowed to humorous”. Sometimes it’s the impending dread and open-ended epilogue of a rat king being devoured by a den of snakes. Sometimes it’s an ouroboros masquerading as a doughnut. Being able depict those different facets in my illustration work allows me to share more of myself though my artwork than I would in any other context. My tattoo work follows a similar suit, although in a way that melds well with the needs of tailoring a client’s concept with that dark surrealist style. In the case of scar cover-ups, the technical aspects of creating a piece that will not only hide a scar from view but also meld with a client’s anatomy and form a unified and long-lasting piece of art really come into play.
It’s been a bit of a journey getting to where I am now with my craft. I have a Bachelors degree in animation that I promptly eschewed upon graduation. I was a graphic designer for years, creating advertisements for car dealerships during the day and practicing colored pencil illustration in my off hours. As soul-crushing as many aspects of corporate creative work can be, I will never forget the stomach-lurching depression of seeing advertisements that I’d done having been discarded in bushes alongside other refuse. Those moments, though frustrating, are what planted the desire to find more fulfilling career venues. When the financial stability of being a corporate creative fell through by way of being laid off, I did the most illogical thing I could possibly do and became a tattoo apprentice. It didn’t feel like a sensible choice at first, both in starting a new career from scratch, and as a career choice for an exceedingly introverted person. Somewhere along the way I began selling my illustration work at small markets in Chicago, offering my work as simple prints and stickers. My first couple of markets earned me a couple hundred dollars; not much, but the elation of earning it through my artwork alone was intoxicating.
I’ve now been tattooing for nearly 10 years and am in the process of opening a private tattoo studio, something I never dreamt of being possible a decade ago. I travel the country selling my artwork at various expos, and my catalog of goods has grown to include screenprinted apparel and artistic home goods and accessories. It’s incredible being able to sustain myself through my artwork, and I feel exceedingly lucky every day to have a career that my younger self could only imagine.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
That failure is something both all-encompassing and negative. Every creative knows that familiar sting of perceived failure. The full rejection of an art piece that took days or weeks to complete or may represent finally mastering a new technique. A piece well-loved by the artist but unseen on social media. A merchandise idea that seemed brilliant at the time but gets passed and ignored many times over. As artists, we are offering facets of ourselves up, pulsing with life and vulnerability, to an audience who doesn’t know the struggles it took to bring that work to fruition. They don’t know that this piece represents something sacred and profound to the artist, nor do they know the years it took to bring life to an idea. We all have finite attention and mere seconds to comprehend the art we see in the world, and it takes some time to see that there’s nothing sinister in that. Just because one piece didn’t find hearts in which to shelter doesn’t mean the next one will also go cold. “Failure” is only a matter of luck, and luck is a purely neutral thing.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
There’s always a perceived notion from folks that it must be easy pursuing an artistic career. It’s the old chestnut in the saying “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”. I can recall several conversations with clients over the years about why tattooing isn’t something carefree to casually pick up as a career. Folks outside the industry don’t see the years of training and continued education involved, nor the financial and time investments needed to make it a sustainable career. It’s easy to romanticize the idea of earning an income through drawing alone, but as with any career, there’s a myriad of factors unseen from an outside perspective that can make or break an art career.
I once had a client remark mid-tattoo about the price of their tattoo, and that tattoo artists must be raking in the cash to charge so much. From an outside perspective, the client only saw the price for the tattoo. They couldn’t see the cost of the supplies used to create their tattoo, nor the commission percentage that went towards being able to work in the shop. They didn’t see the years of bloodborne pathogens training that helped make their tattoo session a safe experience. They couldn’t know the income lost on cancelled appointments and no shows, or the limited years a tattoo artist can potentially work before the job takes a tole on their physical health. It’s hard to see those things sometimes when the outside view seems so unique from one’s own experience.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.awinthrop.com
- Instagram: @awinthrop_art