Artists are told to commit to the long arc. They’re less often told it passes through rent, childcare, debt and a job market that doesn’t recognise them.
I’m 38, just had my second child, and am feeling the rising panic in direct correlation to rising costs. I loathe the words “real job” (the inference is so offensive. I haven’t been playing make-believe for the last fifteen years) but they keep coming out of my mouth. I’m scared to retrain in a new industry/ skill that might become obsolete in five to ten years.
Yes, I completely recognise this feeling. My first plan, twenty years ago, was to learn how to build websites. I thought I could do the odd website project and use that to sustain the studio. For a while that seemed plausible. Now, of course, a lot of that has been made more or less redundant by the likes of Squarespace… I didn’t get on with coding so instead I did teacher training and taught for nearly twenty years - only ever part-time, because I was trying to keep the work going. But even full-time, it wouldn’t have paid enough to solve the problem. Now I work primarily as an art advisor and dealer, but that’s precarious too. So yes, I know exactly what you mean about the panic, and also about the insult hidden in the phrase “real job”. I wish I had a cleaner answer. Mostly I just want to say I really understand the bind, and I wish you all the luck finding a way through it.
It's also the reason why many artists and people working in the arts choose not to have children, as they can't afford it. I also think art schools don't actually teach artists this, and we wonder why art is full of people from wealth and privilege. Personally, I have extra respect for any artist with another job who is still practising, as it means they haven't been handed a privileged hand.
I'm a writer not an artist, but yes! I have been trying to articulate this problem for years, and you've done it beautifully. I've been laboring at this (with some success!) for 25 years but the world views me as a hobbyist. I needed to hear much earlier that having a steady job doesn't mean you failed as an artist.
So true! So much truth here and retirement will be the unraveling of it all. As someone who never made it really, the life of the artist, the inner life, I would not trade. But I so wish I had been prepared to not be working retail in my 60s.
As I had no confidence-building MFA, I knew I would have other kinds of work for a very long time. I became a makeup artist. Because of this it was seen (by the art world) that I didn’t take my practice seriously. No, I needed to support myself. And make the work I wanted to make.
I’ve kept a diary through it all and it is filled artists. Some were at one time very sure of themselves. Then came kids, just as you’ve pointed out in this terrific piece. The certitude of the art career loses its luster.
Having also taught PD to visual artists in art school for over a decade - students in their 20s cannot accept that they will one day be 40. They’re in a bubble. What is fixable in their 20s are student loans - which seem like a fine idea at the time but for an art major are not a viable solution for a career offering intermittent pay.
I don’t think… no, I know the 20 year old me wouldn’t have listened. I would have been confident of being one of the few that would consistently make a good living. Or that I would be always happy with a romantically frugal life. I think a practical and helpful, but brutally honest element of the PD course needs to be developed.
Thank you for writing this out and calling out the failure of the training and the system rather than on the individual artist. I studied art in college then early on shifted to an arts administration career because I couldn't grasp how to build financial sustainability. Now in my late 40's I have moved away from employment and into self-employment because I learned a few things 1) employment doesn't equally sustainability either having been let go a few times and had to bounce back, 2) the biggest disservice that art colleges still don't acknowledge is that you can make it as an artist but you must at the same time learn what it is to build a business. Small businesses exist and can do quite well over the long hall, but by training artists to focus on building their practice first and for most and not learning about what it means to be a business owners can hold artists back from being sustainable throughout their life.
Excellent synopsis of the great difficulty in sustaining an art career and being able to live in the world as a “somewhat “ normal human being.
I think that since the 1980’s as the costs of living have increased, this paradigm has become increasingly elusive and has left the ArtWorld to the wealthy “ nepo baby” classes and the very few who were able to sustain careers by achieving success early enough as to become a part of the commodification market that drives sales and perceived values. In the long run this has not served that world nor the meanings and purposes of art well.
I myself adapted in my 30’s and secured a public school career path with little effort at never aspired for teacher certification , and worked in “underserved” communities for many years while sustaining a studio in NYC and raising 2 children . It wasn’t easy but we squeaked through. What got sacrificed was a lot of time and the ability to network and try to exhibit the work.
Not sure there’s a solution to this quandary beside the wondering “ what ( was left) for massacre to save “ Yeats-Ian crie de coeur that finds salvation in blowing the whole thing up and starting over from scratch. And in a way that might happen in a less dramatic and more natural way as the connection between Visual Art’s and human populations becomes more obscure and people become more and more addicted to technological hypnosis - y’know “not with a bang but a whmper”
Sorry to be so ( perhaps) melodramatically glum but your last few pieces have “unearthed”in me and I’m sure many other of your readers an underlying sadness we carry accompanied by a feeling of help/ hopelessness that needs be pushed aside to continue to live and work as an artist . There needs to be an ability to separate one’s artistic consciousness from the pecuniary “situational-s”and that’s a very difficult line to walk, one fraught with potential tragedy and loss of self , family, community, and mind.
Also Greg - loved the recommended reading of “Stoner”by John Williams an excellent novel by a little known writer.
Eric, I’m sorry if the pieces have unearthed sadness and pessimism. I don’t really mean them that way. I’m optimistic really. I’m a big advocate for artists who are still making serious work later in life, often without the attention, infrastructure or easy rewards they should have had. In some ways that’s the work I’m most interested in now: not the market’s neat little stories of early discovery, but the harder, more complicated persistence of artists who kept going anyway.
And you know, Eric, that I think your work is great. I think it has exactly the kind of seriousness and force that gets missed when the art world is too busy chasing youth, novelty, pedigree or the next thing it can turn into a commodity. So yes, I recognise the sadness in what you’re saying, and the cost of making a life around art when the terms are so often brutal or absurd. But I don’t think that’s the end of the story. There are still artists making important work outside the obvious channels, and there are still viewers and collectors who can be brought towards it. That doesn’t fix the whole system, but it isn’t nothing.
Please be aware that my feelings of sadness and underlying pessimism are in no way meant as a diminishment of both your eloquent articulation or the importance of discussing the problems and potential pratfalls in the pursuit of artistic recognition and sustenance.
For me much of this is welled up retrospective reflection, as having to some extent perhaps by process of catharsis, codified and compartmentalized the perceived injustices and feelings of being passed over, ignored, and trivialized that I, and so many artists endure.
If anything it’s a tribute to your thoroughness of understanding that your reflections and observations tap into those deep wells of psychologically shelved indignation that many of us feel, having put our hearts and souls into an “ enterprise” whose doors of entry are controlled by so much superficiality and capriciousness, favoritisms, political expediences, as well as financial limitations and barriers.( etc. etc.)
Also greatly appreciate your words of support and your insights and observations in general.
Thank you for this. Much of what you observe and suggest is also applicable to other creative fields like writing. The proverbial question directed at English majors, “what are you going to do with an English degree” is another version of the presumption that artists are “qualified for nothing.” It’s just that their skills and talents are not away legible in the ways that the labor economy requires. I love your point that artists need a secondary parallel structure.
Such an important perspective. And delivered with such compassion and respect for artists and culture workers
I’m 38, just had my second child, and am feeling the rising panic in direct correlation to rising costs. I loathe the words “real job” (the inference is so offensive. I haven’t been playing make-believe for the last fifteen years) but they keep coming out of my mouth. I’m scared to retrain in a new industry/ skill that might become obsolete in five to ten years.
Yes, I completely recognise this feeling. My first plan, twenty years ago, was to learn how to build websites. I thought I could do the odd website project and use that to sustain the studio. For a while that seemed plausible. Now, of course, a lot of that has been made more or less redundant by the likes of Squarespace… I didn’t get on with coding so instead I did teacher training and taught for nearly twenty years - only ever part-time, because I was trying to keep the work going. But even full-time, it wouldn’t have paid enough to solve the problem. Now I work primarily as an art advisor and dealer, but that’s precarious too. So yes, I know exactly what you mean about the panic, and also about the insult hidden in the phrase “real job”. I wish I had a cleaner answer. Mostly I just want to say I really understand the bind, and I wish you all the luck finding a way through it.
Thanks friend. There’s some comfort in naming it
It's also the reason why many artists and people working in the arts choose not to have children, as they can't afford it. I also think art schools don't actually teach artists this, and we wonder why art is full of people from wealth and privilege. Personally, I have extra respect for any artist with another job who is still practising, as it means they haven't been handed a privileged hand.
I'm a writer not an artist, but yes! I have been trying to articulate this problem for years, and you've done it beautifully. I've been laboring at this (with some success!) for 25 years but the world views me as a hobbyist. I needed to hear much earlier that having a steady job doesn't mean you failed as an artist.
So true! So much truth here and retirement will be the unraveling of it all. As someone who never made it really, the life of the artist, the inner life, I would not trade. But I so wish I had been prepared to not be working retail in my 60s.
Stark, compassionate truth.
As I had no confidence-building MFA, I knew I would have other kinds of work for a very long time. I became a makeup artist. Because of this it was seen (by the art world) that I didn’t take my practice seriously. No, I needed to support myself. And make the work I wanted to make.
I’ve kept a diary through it all and it is filled artists. Some were at one time very sure of themselves. Then came kids, just as you’ve pointed out in this terrific piece. The certitude of the art career loses its luster.
Thank you for this. The artist (not the art world) economy is very rarely discussed.
Having also taught PD to visual artists in art school for over a decade - students in their 20s cannot accept that they will one day be 40. They’re in a bubble. What is fixable in their 20s are student loans - which seem like a fine idea at the time but for an art major are not a viable solution for a career offering intermittent pay.
I don’t think… no, I know the 20 year old me wouldn’t have listened. I would have been confident of being one of the few that would consistently make a good living. Or that I would be always happy with a romantically frugal life. I think a practical and helpful, but brutally honest element of the PD course needs to be developed.
Thanks
Thank you for writing this out and calling out the failure of the training and the system rather than on the individual artist. I studied art in college then early on shifted to an arts administration career because I couldn't grasp how to build financial sustainability. Now in my late 40's I have moved away from employment and into self-employment because I learned a few things 1) employment doesn't equally sustainability either having been let go a few times and had to bounce back, 2) the biggest disservice that art colleges still don't acknowledge is that you can make it as an artist but you must at the same time learn what it is to build a business. Small businesses exist and can do quite well over the long hall, but by training artists to focus on building their practice first and for most and not learning about what it means to be a business owners can hold artists back from being sustainable throughout their life.
Excellent synopsis of the great difficulty in sustaining an art career and being able to live in the world as a “somewhat “ normal human being.
I think that since the 1980’s as the costs of living have increased, this paradigm has become increasingly elusive and has left the ArtWorld to the wealthy “ nepo baby” classes and the very few who were able to sustain careers by achieving success early enough as to become a part of the commodification market that drives sales and perceived values. In the long run this has not served that world nor the meanings and purposes of art well.
I myself adapted in my 30’s and secured a public school career path with little effort at never aspired for teacher certification , and worked in “underserved” communities for many years while sustaining a studio in NYC and raising 2 children . It wasn’t easy but we squeaked through. What got sacrificed was a lot of time and the ability to network and try to exhibit the work.
Not sure there’s a solution to this quandary beside the wondering “ what ( was left) for massacre to save “ Yeats-Ian crie de coeur that finds salvation in blowing the whole thing up and starting over from scratch. And in a way that might happen in a less dramatic and more natural way as the connection between Visual Art’s and human populations becomes more obscure and people become more and more addicted to technological hypnosis - y’know “not with a bang but a whmper”
Sorry to be so ( perhaps) melodramatically glum but your last few pieces have “unearthed”in me and I’m sure many other of your readers an underlying sadness we carry accompanied by a feeling of help/ hopelessness that needs be pushed aside to continue to live and work as an artist . There needs to be an ability to separate one’s artistic consciousness from the pecuniary “situational-s”and that’s a very difficult line to walk, one fraught with potential tragedy and loss of self , family, community, and mind.
Also Greg - loved the recommended reading of “Stoner”by John Williams an excellent novel by a little known writer.
Eric, I’m sorry if the pieces have unearthed sadness and pessimism. I don’t really mean them that way. I’m optimistic really. I’m a big advocate for artists who are still making serious work later in life, often without the attention, infrastructure or easy rewards they should have had. In some ways that’s the work I’m most interested in now: not the market’s neat little stories of early discovery, but the harder, more complicated persistence of artists who kept going anyway.
And you know, Eric, that I think your work is great. I think it has exactly the kind of seriousness and force that gets missed when the art world is too busy chasing youth, novelty, pedigree or the next thing it can turn into a commodity. So yes, I recognise the sadness in what you’re saying, and the cost of making a life around art when the terms are so often brutal or absurd. But I don’t think that’s the end of the story. There are still artists making important work outside the obvious channels, and there are still viewers and collectors who can be brought towards it. That doesn’t fix the whole system, but it isn’t nothing.
Greg,
Please be aware that my feelings of sadness and underlying pessimism are in no way meant as a diminishment of both your eloquent articulation or the importance of discussing the problems and potential pratfalls in the pursuit of artistic recognition and sustenance.
For me much of this is welled up retrospective reflection, as having to some extent perhaps by process of catharsis, codified and compartmentalized the perceived injustices and feelings of being passed over, ignored, and trivialized that I, and so many artists endure.
If anything it’s a tribute to your thoroughness of understanding that your reflections and observations tap into those deep wells of psychologically shelved indignation that many of us feel, having put our hearts and souls into an “ enterprise” whose doors of entry are controlled by so much superficiality and capriciousness, favoritisms, political expediences, as well as financial limitations and barriers.( etc. etc.)
Also greatly appreciate your words of support and your insights and observations in general.
Thank you for this. Much of what you observe and suggest is also applicable to other creative fields like writing. The proverbial question directed at English majors, “what are you going to do with an English degree” is another version of the presumption that artists are “qualified for nothing.” It’s just that their skills and talents are not away legible in the ways that the labor economy requires. I love your point that artists need a secondary parallel structure.