Originally posted on 01-24-2015
Trying to make it as a professional artist in this day in age is a labor of love. You have to be absolutely sure of what you’re getting into. You’re not going to make much, if any, money selling work. In reality, you will lose money making it. You will have to take jobs that you are less enthusiastic about in order to support yourself. You will have to find a way to make time to paint (or insert medium of choice here), and eventually, you will come to a point when you realize that you aren’t painting, you are just working. What do you do? Well, you have several options: 1) you promise yourself you will try to make time; 2) you decide art is the most important thing, and quit your job to focus on your passion; 3) more reasonably, you cut back on hours at work so you can spend some time in your studio, if you’re luck enough to have one; or 4) you married into wealth and now you can spend all day indulging your every whim and selling work to your new rich friends ( 5) is that you were always wealthy so none of this applies to you, so congrats!).
I am guilty of getting lost in work. Living is expensive, and, for me, it is difficult to focus on my studio practice when I’m more concerned with making money and paying my bills. After graduate school, I told myself that I was ok with taking whatever job crossed my path, that I would keep looking for opportunities, paint, and show my work. I knew it was going to be hard, but I don’t think I really did. Most jobs I had sucked. They were fine for a while, even enjoyable for the first few months, and then the inevitable decline happened and the honeymoon was over. Bouncing around from job to job didn’t help, trust me, I’ve tried. How was I going to get out of this rut?
Plan B: Focus on art.
Yes, this should have been Plan A all along. When my graduate advisor told us we should leave school and not worry about jobs but just paint, I thought he was crazy. I still do! But he was a little right. We should be focusing on our art and not let it take a backseat. But how do we do that and support ourselves? I also found the answer to this in grad school: teach art.
I didn’t get my master’s degree to teach. I wanted to work on the skills I didn’t think I got in college, and to make sure that I had tons of resources available to me when I was on my own in my studio. But while I was there, I really enjoyed helping the other students.
Since then, I have been teaching after school art to elementary students. It’s been fun and crazy, exhausting, rewarding, and super stressful some of the time. Recently, I quit my other job (not art related) because i couldn’t handle it anymore. I decided it was art or nothing. So, here’s Plan A revised: I work part time making art and part time teaching art. I can think of nothing better than sharing my passion of art with others.
Right now, I am working on getting my teaching certificate to open up job opportunities. I’ll be able to teach art from Pre-K through graduate school. I’d still really like to teach college art, but for now, I’m looking forward to getting younger kids excited about making art, and the older ones ready for applying to schools.
I’m really excited about my prospects at the moment, and, more importantly, I’m looking forward to having more time to make my art.