The One Hundred Day Creative Challenge: Day 23

The One Hundred Day Creative Challenge: Day 23

Can you make money from your art? Is your art for money or love? Don’t we all have to eat and pay our bills?

Living the creative life is a nice idea and often an idealistic dream, so how many people actually make enough money from their art to support themselves financially for the foreseeable future? I googled this question and the closest answer I came up with was that it’s an ‘intimate’ question. People don’t like to talk about it.

If people can break even and sustain a creative lifestyle, they are generally happy.

Oprah once said, ‘Do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do’.

My husband Steve was in business for twenty-five years before he had a moment on the Champs de Lysse in Paris.’One day I realized: I had arrived and I didn’t like the destination. So in a moment, sitting in a café on the Champs de Lysse in Paris, sipping a glass of wine, I decided that over the next five years I was going to reinvent my life – to redefine my normal.’

Steve had a five-year plan where he built a business, portfolio and a whole new direction before he took the plunge into photography full-time. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do.

In the meantime, don’t put off working on your art. You may or may not make a career out of it, but if you have a compulsion and love for your art you will keep creating.

I came across this book in which forty artists were interviewed and they shared how they made money from their art. You may find it a useful tool.

http://www.sharonlouden.com/book_projects.shtml