Surviving These Times as an Artist

There are social media groups dedicated to art, being an artist, and making sales as one. They are depressing. One person's advice for artists trying to earn a fulltime living from their work? "You have to make what THEY want, not what YOU want."

That's good advice if all you care about is the sale. But when your work is a means of survival in the larger sense, the need to stay above ground outweighs the need to make the sale. Until the rent is due, of course, and then we worry about sales the way everbody else does. 

If I tried to do the math on my work in terms of sales, I would never toy with the idea of being a fulltime creative. But my creative work isn't limited to painting and I am grateful that one aspect of my creative life can pay the bills. But working for others while simultaneously working for yourself is exhausting.

And it is that in part because when the fools you work for make their dumb choices and set out on their wrong-headed Don Quixote-type adventures in capitalism, you can't hep but wonder if you'd be happier doing your own Don Quixote adventures without distraction.

Surviving these dumb times requires us all to make little deals with life to get through. But some money is too expensive to make and sooner or later you have to DECIDE. The universe will TELL YOU at one point or another to CHOOSE YOUR FATE.

For me, Joe's Exploding Zoo is part of that decision-making process. Take all the things you value creatively and try to centralize them, I told myself. But that's a neat trick at times and it pays to pretend (or put yourself in the position) you don't have any other real option and that you won't make it financially without doing the work and going the extra mile.

For a lot of creative people right now, how to DO that is the problem. It's also MY problem in some ways, at least in terms of breaking free from the constraints of working on other people's creative projects.

In terms of a single, motivating action step, I have (at the very end here) come up with THIS: Used like a Brian Eno oblique strategy, I am trying to honor this line:

"Every day, find a new, non-traditional way to show your work in the world."

I'm using this as a survival strategy, a way to find new motivation, and a way to connect with other like-minded artists. Join me.

--Joe Wallace