Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Matt Rota. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Matt, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

There is not one most meaningful project I’ve worked on. I’m lucky that I’ve been able to carve out a repution in the illustration world where most of the project I work on are meaningful. Since studying art as an undergraduate I’ve always had the goal of working on assignments that are heavily involved with social justice and politics. I get to work with clients like the New York Times, ProPublica, The Equal Justice Initiative, And In These Times. My favorite projects involve longform stories which allow me to really get into the topic, do research, and create a full series of images on a topic. Of the more interesting projects I’ve worked on recently was one for ProPublica on the role of Diplomats and Honorary Consuls, and how the people in those positions, due to their diplomatic imunity, are in a position to abuse thier power, doing things like smugling drugs or money for terrorists and drug cartels. Earlier in the year I worked on a story for In These Times about how the EU is supplying technology to Leaders of African Nations like Senegal, and Mali to help them control migration across thier borders, so to stem the flow of migration between Africa and Europe. This tech is being used by the leaders of these countries to track and surpress political opposition. Stories like these deal with undereported topics of international corruption, and I think the coverage of them is important, he journalists involved are often putting themselves at risk for the sake of greater public awareness. It’s important to me that I am able to make art in support of these topics, it’s also very enriching for me to learn more about these issues, to be able to be aware that these are things happening right now in the world, and being able to work on these stories allows me to feel engaged.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am an editorial illustrator, and college instructor at the School of Visual Arts in NY. Working in editorial illustration means creating illustrations mostly for magazines. My clients include the New York Times, the New Yorker, ProPublica, Politico, the Guardian, the Washington Post, and a dozen others. I primarily work with the art directos at these publications. The art director is in chage of designing the layout of the magazine and serves as the creative liason between the writters, artists and editors. They send me the articles and sometimes provide me with a creative direction the magazine has in mind. Sometimes they suggest image ideas, sometimes the direction is up to me, though it’s important to note, I get hired for particular articles based on my reputation and esthetic approach, so there is an understanding about the style and tone I bring to the work. Editorial illustrators are not Jack-Of-All-Traits artists. They usually have specific points of view they get hired for. I usually get hired to deal with serious topics involving politics and social justice. I have a specific drawing style (sketchy pen and ink) and specific colors (moody psychologically intense colors ). So this is what art direcors generally expect from me. To work in this feild I had to start by creating a body of work that has a consistent style, and create images that delt with the sort of topics that were being published in the magazines that I wanted to work for. I started out around 2006, and was making work about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I sent these to the NY Tmes and was eventually hired (I started promoting myself in 2003, and it took about 3 years of refining my approach to get work). I had to research who the art directors were at the magazines I was interested in working at, and started to send them samples of my drawings. That, in a nutshell is how you get work in almost any feild of illustration. Styles and art directors have changed over the years, there are new ways of potsing your work publically now that didn’t exist when I was starting out, but the basic interation of sending work to art directors is still the same. The dificult part is not finding the first job, it’s continuing to put the hard work in to get the second and third, and continuing to find ways to stay interested for 10- 15 years.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Early in my career Ihad a dificult time deciding where i wanted to invest my time, which direction I wanted my career to go. I had studied Fine Arts in undergrad, but had the desire to be an illustrator. Once I began to get illustration work, I realized a career in illustration was realistic, but i needed ot build a better portfolio and a community. Si iwent to graduate school, but through the network I gained there (I moved to NY for grad school) I was sudden;y presented with opportunities to show my work in galleries. I had a number of offers for group shows and some solo shows. The work for galleries was much more time consuming, and the effort I was putting into that was making it hard to focus on editorial work. As a result I was getting less illustration work. in about 2013, I had put an enourmous ammount of work into a show at a gallery in Paris that did not sell well. I was out of money, and had to make a choice about which direction I wanted my career to take. If I wanted to continue to persue gallery work, I would have to transition away from illustration, because I didn’t have time to do both well. And if i was going to be an illustrator, I had to focus all of my attention on that, build up my portfolio again, be more aggressive about promoting my work. More out of necessity than anything I decided illustraton would have to be the direction I took. I knew it was the most reliable option for a stable income, and had had the most success already. I realized then that it was not realistic to try to persue more than one path as an artist, If I was not fully stable in either. Picking a direction and sticking with it was the only way to really make the best art I was capabul of.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I think too often, the cuture in the united states equates success with money. What makes the most money is deemed the most important cutural asset. People outside of the art world tend to admire art that sells for the most. It’s a kind of ruthless capitalist mentality, and it infects the motivations of young people who want to become an artist to become a celbrity and make tons of money. A lot of bad ideas and shallow art are held in high regard that acheives this kind of succes. This was a driving factor behind NFT’s, like a goldrush everyone wanted to get in on, or a bank everyone was trying to rob. I think this is a very toxic mentality. It’s telling that public funding for the arts is lower in the United States than many other wealthy nations. I think more public financial support is essential. I don’t just mean for fine arts destined for museums, I mean for publishing, films and animation, and illustation related projects. Commercial arts as well as fine arts. Artists with a basic level of support and access to better grants and financial opporunities are less inlclined to chase after get rich quick market schemes. They have more freedom and less pressure to strike it rich, and are more capable of creating something meaningful.

Contact Info:

• Website: MattRotasart.com mattrota.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matt.rota/

Image Credits
I hold the rights to these images. Copyright Matt Rota