There Are Endless Ways to Be an Artist
There Are Endless Ways to Be an Artist
Let’s begin with this: you do not need to pursue art as an income-generating activity. Not everyone wants to sell their work. Not everyone needs or wants to make a living from their creative life—and that is absolutely fine.
Some artists find great joy in keeping their work private. They create for themselves, for their own growth, for the beauty of it. Some gift their work to friends and family, share it within small circles, or simply make it for the love of making. Art can be sacred, personal, playful, healing. It doesn’t have to be public. It doesn’t have to be commercial. It doesn’t even have to be finished, if the process itself is the point. There is no single definition of what it means to be an artist.
If you are fortunate enough to earn your living elsewhere, or you simply don’t need to earn income at all, that can be a blessing. It means you can create without pressure, without deadlines, without the marketplace in your ear. You can move at your own pace, follow your own rhythm, and shape a body of work that reflects exactly what you want it to—free from economic concerns. That freedom is real, and for many, it’s the only way they want to live as an artist.
But for others—for artists like me—the situation is different. I need to earn a living, and I can’t stand the idea of being pulled away from the studio to do something I have no interest in just to pay the bills. For some of us, the drive to create is not only deep—it’s constant. We want to be in the studio every day. We want our work to be seen, to be out in the world, to find homes, to live beyond us. We thrive on the long hours, the solitude, the challenge, and the satisfaction of turning vision into form.
For artists in this position, figuring out how to sell work becomes essential—not because we want to become salespeople, but because we want to keep making. We want to spend our days doing the thing we were born to do. Selling work isn’t about ego or fame—it’s about sustainability. It’s about making the art life possible.
Neither path is better. Neither is more “pure” or more “real.” They’re just different expressions of the same core truth: art matters. How you live that truth is up to you.
The important thing is to know yourself. Are you someone who wants to keep your art private, as a personal ritual or gift? Are you someone who wants to engage with the public, show your work, build a collector base? Are you somewhere in between?
Whatever your answer, honor it. There is no single correct way to be an artist. There are endless ways.
Develop a Modus Operandi
In my artwork I have developed efficiencies that not only save time but reduce anxiety and frustration. I have a current set of works that I call typographic abstractions and in order to arrive at a solution to any given painting in this group, I created a series of repeatable processes so that as I finish each of the many layers of processes that it takes to arrive at a satisfactorily completed work, I could confidently move on to the next layer and then the next until I arrived at the completion of the work and be confident that it is finished without looking backwards. I assume most artists eventually develop these kinds of efficiencies in their work.
absolutely true! it can’t be said often enough; i still see people hesitate to call themselves artists because they don’t sell their work, or sell enough to make a living, or whatever else they decided is the goalpost. NO. you are an artist NOW, no matter what you do or what you might do in the future. making art = artist.
A way to make your love visible in the world. . . so many ways to do this.