Keep Your Day Job?

 Reasons to Keep Your Day Job


Although my eventual life goal is to quit my day job, I like this article a lot. About 4 years ago I planned to quit my "art job" and just be a professional in the career I'm employed at currently. I had been somewhat destroyed by the studio art parts of my college education, so I went over to "the dark side" and chose a profession, thinking I was done with all my half baked plans to be an artist. Initially I synthesized the two by working on artist issues within the field I had chosen. However when i graduated I got a job that had nothing to do with arts in any way. The loving research that led to a paper that took two years to  write, sat on the shelf, while I doodled through meetings and told myself I could do this for the next 40 years.


Amusingly the paper that took me away from arts and into the workforce was about the workstyles of artists. I was fascinated by the differences between the reality of how artists work and sustain careers and the way that the public and policy makers concieved of what artists are and do. There was a lot of economic focus on the time on Richard Florida- who did very soft and fuzzy research on what "the creative class" was, and business types and policy makers were lapping it up (for excellent dissections of the major assumptions and flaws in the work of Richard Florida, check out Ann Markusen's Urban Development and the Politics of a Creative Class). Another really fascinating work is Neo-Bohemia which is about the ways that the lifestyle of the artist becomes a fashion accessory for hip young middle class yuppies.


So to get to the point, being an artist, and the work of the artist is often obscured by the fascination people have with the larger than life life of the artist. Van Gogh and his crazy ear, Frida Kahlo taking lovers and fighting with Diego Rivera, suicides, quarrels, studios full of debauchery, etc. Instability, poverty, scandal and madness, are seductive myths we like to hear about being an artist. After all, if art is passion, if art is a calling with uncertain rewards, shouldn't artists be willing sacrifices?


Wouldn't that be romantic, doesn't that make a great story? But in reality...artists need to be disciplined workers. Practice and repetition and perseverance is what it comes down to. For my birthday I was given a really great book Inside the Painter's Studio. In it the author (himself an artist) conducts interviews with working painters. What comes across consistently is that they work. They work hard. They work regular days, where they get up, have coffee and head to work. Not a one suggests that being an artist is mystical or complicated. They use simple tools. They have simple spaces they work inside. The core and the key is working.


Bringing me back to this article. I don't completely agree with the main point. For me, my day job is something that takes me away from being an artist right now. It makes me tired and I don't actually need that much interaction with other people- I'm an introvert who fakes a good extrovert. But there are a few points in the article that I really love. One is the emphasis on discipline and practice- making a habit of being in and around your art. Don't think that if you life changed, your work would somehow change. Potential  and talent are not as important and practice. Two is that there's nothing romantic about being poor, and it's harmful to think that way about your livelihood. Being too good to make money is not a good way for artists to live.  And the third point I like is the idea that maybe some people won't ever be a fulltime artist, but that doesn't make it worthless to do. The arts are enriching for everyone, and people SHOULD have hobbies, should be something and someone beside their jobs. I think that's a crucial concept.


Which is not to say I want to keep my day job. I aspire to fulltime artist. But for now I'm a day job with an art habit.