This week we’re once again delivering some special artists to your inbox. We wanted to focus on living artists with a long career, because let’s be honest, although it is the wish of many, it’s no small task.

We tend to believe that artist success is created early and quickly, sometimes even with the graduation show, when, either you succeed immediately, or you choose a different career. But success is rarely so linear.

Often, or perhaps most of the time, It arrives slowly, sometimes dotted with bursts of down periods, through hard work over a long career.
To be an artist is to persevere.

We have to admire the artists that see success today, not because they just had a graduation show, but because they have been toiling with their art for decades. And on that note, here are three artists in our database with rankings in the top 1500, that we believe have stood the test of time.

Let us introduce to you; Anna Boghiguian: the Egyptian nomadic artist born in 1946, who takes inspiration from the places she travels for her paintings, drawings, collages, sculptures and installations to create an emotional map of the world.

Or how about Beatriz González, the columbian painter born in 1938 who uses and distorts pop culture images from newspapers and magazines? She acts as both witness, mirror and darkly humorous provoker of the brutal socio-political experience of her beloved country. “Art says things that History cannot”.  She has bravely continued to create through times of great political turmoil and violence and is well worth your attention and admiration.

And last, but certainly not least, Arthur Jafa: the american artist, video artist and cinematographer born in 1960.  His career has experienced significant troughs and peaks and yet, just last year, at the age of 58, was awarded the Golden Lion for best artist at the Venice Biennale for his film “The White Album”. His intersectional creative career poised between the film and art world and driven by his need to explore and intimate the black experience, is particularly compelling; it was his gripping 7 minute video essay, “Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death” which rocketed him back into the limelight in 2016. He’s worked with Spike Lee, Stanley Kubrick, Jay-Z, Kanye West, and his works are held in collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Tate and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. Jafa is the perfect example of an artist staying true to their beliefs, and persisting.

And perhaps that is the perfect place to leave you today. Persist in your art, persist in your work in the art world, persist in your fascination and support of artists… Persist with art.