Since releasing Real Artists Don’t Starve, I’ve heard from a number of people who don’t believe it’s possible to make a living off your creativity — whether in writing, fine art, or another medium. But is that really true?
For most of my life, I was told a story about what it means to be an artist, a title reserved for that elite group of people who were talented but unlikely to succeed. The advice was always the same:
- Don’t quit your day job.
- Do this while you’re young.
- Always have something to fall back on.
When I was growing up, I was told that creativity, though a nice outlet, was never something you should go “all in” on. Because, odds are, you’ll starve. You may have been told the same.
It turns out, though, that’s just not true.
Real artists don’t starve
For years, the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) has been surveying graduates of arts programs to see how successful they are in the real world.
Approximately 120,000 degrees in the arts are awarded every year, and the question is, what happens to these people? Not what you think.
You might imagine, as I did, the stereotypical starving artist: the stubborn loner struggling to make ends meet and forsaking every adult concern for their work.
This is what we have been taught to expect when imagining people in full-time, creative careers. We imagine poverty-stricken souls spending their days slaving away at the work, toiling in agony to create their next masterpiece.
We picture Michelangelo on his back, nose to ceiling, paint dripping in his eyes, earning little for his genius.
The SNAAP study, however, revealed something quite different. The majority of trained artists are actually thriving. Here were some fascinating statistics:
- 70% of these graduates have found jobs within the arts,
- 75% have been or are self-employed,
- 99% consider creativity to be an important competency in their profession, and
They report income levels that support families, sustain careers, and enable charitable giving. In other words, they are not starving.
Contrast that with a 2014 US Census Bureau where nearly 75 percent of science, tech, engineering, and mathematics graduates are not employed in their field of study, and we are forced to consider a new reality for modern creatives.
Many artists are, in fact, not suffering for their craft. They’re proudly producing work that matters and pays the bills.
So we are brought to a sobering conclusion about creative work:
You can make art and make a living.
You don’t have to suffer to create
Over the past couple years, while writing Real Artists Don’t Starve, I interviewed hundreds of working creatives and came across a surprising fact. When we look at the lives of successful artists, writers, and entrepreneurs, we see a unique mindset:
They don’t believe they have to suffer to succeed.
These people, those I call Thriving Artists, think about themselves and their work differently than those who don’t succeed. Discarding the ways of the Starving Artist, they follow a new set of rules, what I call The Rules of the New Renaissance.
Here they are, all 12 of them:
Find a way to live off your art
These are the things nobody told me — as a kid drawing cartoons, a teenager playing the guitar, and a twenty-something dreaming of writing books.
In my new book, I share story after story of thriving artists who didn’t suffer for their work but instead found a way to live off it. And if we follow in their footsteps, adopting the rules by which they live their lives, we can do the same.
To learn more about how you can stop starving and join the New Renaissance, check out Real Artists Don’t Starve. Order the book and get over $100 in bonus resources.
You can also check out Real Artists Don’t Starve here.
Are you working in your field of study? How can you leverage creativity for your advantage at work? Share in the comments.
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