Full Time Isn’t Always Best For Your Art
Who doesn’t dream of the freedom of working on art full time?
But artist Catherine Rains (Ep.85) tried the full time artist route.
She realized very quickly it was bad for her art.
Here’s what we can all learn from her experience.
Rains realized two important things.
First, she DID love that she got to work on her art full time.
But second, she didn't love that all of her focus needed to be on selling. If art was her full time gig, art suddenly needed to make money. Which meant that there wasn't time to develop her style. She didn’t have time to be curious about how she wanted to create as an artist. She was too busy needing to pay the bills.
So she went back to her corporate job, and she learned from her experience. She still got serious about art but she kept her day job for awhile
It took the pressure off of the art needing to be good. Needing it to sell. In fact, she didn't sell art for 2-3 years just so she could give herself the time to figure out what she really wanted to do and say in her work.
This gave her the freedom to really explore without the very real pressure of needing to sell. And in that freedom, she found her voice and a way of working she absolutely loves.
Put it to Practice:
There can be an urgency to move to a full time artist. But it's worth taking a moment to think about if that will really help you create the kind of art you want to make.
Depending on your financial situation, needing to make a living from art changes your relationship to it. It's almost impossible for it not to. And if you don't yet have an established style and practice firmly locked into place, that may not be for the better.
It can be easy to think that doing art full time will solve all of your problems around art. And it will solve some problems. But it also might create a whole lot more.
If you're not painting regularly yet, there are a lot of things you can try before quitting your job. Try daily painting. Paint smaller. Limit your materials. Focus. You might find that by changing a few of your expectations can open up a lot of time you didn't realize you had.