Art Saves Lives, but Does It Make Livings?

"Art saves lives" is the tagline for one of the art schools in my area, and I believe that to be literally true. How it goes about saving a life merits a thoughtful look at what life requires of us, and we of it, to make it rewarding, or at least bearable in the rough spots.

I had a job once whose benefits included a sabbatical. I spent mine setting up to become a freelance photographer. I knew I had the pieces for this:

• At 10 years old, I had figured out a pricing strategy for my paintings, accounting for my own time, amortized use of paint, cost of materials, and what similar works sold for. People who are born to be entrepreneurs start acting that way as children. One man I know was running Kool-Aid stands when he was six, because "lemonade" was too narrow a market offering. He's since started and sold four startups and is now in school to be a chef, because he wants to.
• At 35, I had figured out enough accounting to show my books to a CPA, who remarked he could follow a penny through them, and showed me work from four other photographers whose businesses he accounted for.
• I'd won a couple of regional competitions and I knew how much better I was getting.

I spent my sabbatical making art, doing a show on black-and-white candids, and sold from the show. What I learned during a sabbatical spent on photography is that I have enough talent to compete with the pros, but the relationship to the work shifted from "what am I trying to say" to "what do they want to see." And I lack the will to overcome a variety of challenges to work in landscape.

I learned that art, for me, is self-expression to be healthy, and therapy if I'm ill, and while it matters tremendously that what I produce pleases my eye, that doesn't mean it's my actual target in life. Other people can admire my gift. "You should be an artist!"

I smile pleasantly. I am, already, an artist, I carefully don't tell them.

The artists whose biographies I've read all had one thing in common: unstoppable compulsion, and circumstances that either allowed, or required, total focus on who they were and what they had to say in art to the exclusion of all else. Including the necessities of money, and what they were willing to go without:

• Other people's definitions of success.
• Other things to do, or be, that pleased them or made them happy with themselves.
• Friends outside of their passion.
• Time with friends inside the passion.
  
• The approvals and opportunities won by attendance at the right schools and events.
• An immediate and obvious market.

I treat art as a thing I do for someone when I either have no money or I have no object I can purchase to express something. If I wanted to see if I could make a go of it, I'd arrange consignment and start entering competitions, or work with an art dealer. My failure to persist at this, when even my son wanted to learn something about sales to sell what I make, is not what makes me "not an artist." It means I'm not an entrepreneur.

"When bankers get together, they talk about art. When artists get together, they talk about money," said Oscar Wilde. I claim it's because it's easy to do one or the other, but not both. The artist and the entrepreneur need each other to specialize.

The other thing I notice is that the rapid multiplication of visual arts opportunities has both popularized bad design (most websites are guilty of this, for instance) and created enormous opportunities for anyone who wants to do better. Consider Valve. To get a job there, write a letter and explain what you want to do for them; they hired a construction engineer because he showed them how he could improve the plausibility of the game environment.

My point is that it's not whether you sell your art work, in whatever form of art you make. It's whether you know that you need a business representative, and what kind; and whether you want to give up family and modern comforts to pursue the dream. I wasn't.