Why Are Artists Told They Can’t Make It?
When I was studying Fine Arts at FIT, one piece of advice came up more than almost anything else in our business classes:
“Get a day job.”
To be fair, that’s not bad advice.
We live in an unforgiving capitalist society. Rent is due whether your paintings sell or not. Health insurance doesn’t care about your creative ambitions. Most artists will need another source of income at some point in their careers.
But for me, that advice landed differently.
Maybe it was growing up Catholic. Maybe it was the OCD. Maybe it was just my personality. Whatever the reason, fear stuck.
I didn’t hear, “Make sure you can support yourself while building your art career.”
What I heard was, “You probably won’t make it.”
And because I respected my professors, I believed them.
I graduated and carried that belief with me for years.
What’s funny is that I ignored fear in almost every other area of my life.
After college, I moved to Germany with my life savings.
I didn’t speak the language.
I didn’t have a safety net.
I didn’t know if I would succeed.
And eventually, I lost all of the money I had brought with me.
But I went anyway. I bought a one way ticket and packed a duffle bag full of clothes and I never looked back… until it all went to hell and I came back… but NOT with my tail between my legs.
Why?
Because I believed that if everything went wrong, I would figure it out.
I learned German after I moved. I found a job. I mean… I started as an intern making 400 euros a month. But eventually, I worked my way up into brand partnerships for a global esports company at its headquarters.
Nobody told me I couldn’t do it.
So I believed I couldn’t lose.
Looking back, I wonder what would have happened if I had applied that same logic to my art career.
What if I had approached being an artist the same way I approached moving across the world?
What if I had trusted that I could figure it out?
What if I had believed that failure wasn’t permanent, that setbacks were survivable, and that I was capable of adapting?
Instead, I spent years believing that art was the one area of my life where the risks were somehow different.
Where I needed certainty before I could begin.
Where I needed permission.
Where I needed a backup plan before I could take myself seriously.
Why do we do this to artists?
When someone wants to start a business, we talk about strategy.
When someone wants to move abroad, we talk about opportunity.
When someone wants to change careers, we talk about growth.
But when someone wants to be an artist, we only ever start with warnings.
We chastise with statistics.
We beat two dead horses with reasons it probably won’t work.
Of course, making a living as an artist is difficult. Duh.
So is starting a company.
So is moving to another country.
So is building any life worth living.
The difference is that we don’t constantly remind everyone else of the odds. Or do we?
The older I get, the more I think the real lesson isn’t that artists need day jobs.
It’s that artists need to trust themselves.
Not because success is guaranteed.
But because if things don’t go according to plan, they’ll figure it out.
Just like everyone else.
And sometimes I can’t help but wonder what kind of artist I would be today if I had believed that from the beginning.
I could have figured it out.
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