Meet Megan Mickael | Fine Art Photographer and Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Megan Mickael and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Megan, how do you think about risk?
I would define risks or risk-taking as an action that evokes uneasiness, or even fear! A risk involves potential failure, understanding that but taking a leap in a risky endeavor also evokes a sense of empowerment. If successful, the validation of your passion and vision can be life and even career changing.

Throughout my career artistic risks and financial risks have equally guided me in defining boundaries.

Deciding to major in Fine Art, marked my first foray into artistic risk taking. A safer more defined route would have been a Graphic Design major, a career less risky more attainable. However, art calls to ones’ core… it pins to your heart and your soul. To follow your heart is a risk as we are taught to follow our brain. The heart comes in second. I follow the heart first. Then my brain.

Another risk was leaving my fulltime (and full benefits) Photo Assistant job to go freelance. There was intense pressure being a Female Photography Assistant in the late 90s. Women simply weren’t. I had to work twice as hard to prove my worth and talent. The burden of constantly having to validate your expertise to others was a burden and damaging to the overall creative process. Taking the jump to go freelance gave me the space and freedom to allow my creativity to flow but I was also jumping without a net. Flying by the seat of my pants to make ends meet and to make my art exist.

As my career has ebbed and flowed, I still embrace and confront risks daily. Being an artist pure and simple is: risky. Risky because as artists we are sharing something intimate. Something personal. We are setting ourselves up to be judged or loved or despised or revered or acknowledged or ignored. That is a huge risk.

Risk-taking involves brutal honesty and vulnerability. Risks involuntarily get you to channel all your energy into something that can be mind-blowingly exciting. Terrifying, honest and beautiful all wrapped up into one.

I take away from each experience the good and bad, success or not, nothing is insignificant, it all perpetuates growth.
Making art is risky, it is a raw and intimate version of oneself, exposed for all to see.
As an artist I feel my work is innately me and vice versa. I am my art. That is terrifying!
Exposing yourself, allowing that very personal version of to you to shine through your art, is a risk. It means opening yourself up to interpretation, judgement, criticism and failure. But also praise, love and respect! As artist, we are ALL risk takers.

Risk-taking involves exposing the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful that exits in all of us.
Risk-taking can be financial, emotional, physical and psychological.

Risk-taking is not knowing the answer and letting go of control but believing in the outcome…there is always something to reap from taking the leap.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
My love of creating started in my mom’s studio, a Pandora’s Box of colors, textures and treasures. Light streamed through the windows illuminating the dancing dust as it rained down on me.

Paintbrushes, paint bottles, spray paint, unvarnished canvases, fabrics, markers, chalk, scissors, glue, cameras and film became my playground, and my most honest form of personal expression.

Throughout my childhood my imagination matched my artistic curiosity and paved the path for me to study Art in college at Southern Methodist University. There I majored in Fine Art with a focus on Painting and Photography. I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art and a minor in Art History.

The early days were spent fine tuning the basics of photography. After mastering the basics, I used that foundation as a jumping off point to explore and find my personal style. That style organically evolved to parallel my own personal life journey. My art shifts and pivots as each chapter or moment does.

The pandemic gifted me time. Time to work. Something I had been struggling to harness until 2020.

My life and art got an unexpected surprise and detour with the birth of one son, a wedding, the birth of a second son. Several moves and almost two decades later a roundabout destiny of Covid19 presented a yellow brick road of sorts, a path, an opportunity to secure an inexpensive, crude yet beautiful, light filled studio space, reminiscent of my mother’s studio all those years ago.

It has been there, at Studio Three Four Seven I have been gifted the space, mental and physical, to create.

Since 2020 I have consistently been shooting film, shooting digital, manipulating, editing and evolving each presented photographic series.

I have been honored to be selected to participate in Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas locations of The Other Art Fair multiple times. Red Dot Miami during Art Basel as well as have had two shows in Manhattan New York, a solo show at Los Angeles Art Association, and I have been in group shows across the US and abroad.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Los Olivos wine tasting
A boat ride to Catalina Island
Anywhere to watch the 49ers play

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
The men in my life: my husband and two sons.

Website: https://www.meganmickaelimages.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meganmickaelimages/

Image Credits
Megan Mickael