Thanks for spelling all of that out so clearly and compassionately- great insights. I can totally hear it’s a struggle, and a big one, for folks with that bent.

Unfortunately that’s no easy way around the fact that you do have to notice and see the people your artwork will serve.

I think Arianne Goodwin does a great job of bringing these two worlds together through her SmArtist seminars.

Our economy is a dysfunctional one, and it can be quite an interesting, and at times painful, journey to find the balance between the two. As a spiritual healer myself, I find relatedness to much of what you write above.

peace
Mark

I think the problem that many very artistic people have is that their need to explore the world through their art is so strong and overwhelming that ‘a day in the kitchen cooking‘ now and then is simply nowhere near enough to satisfy it.

People who are blessed/cursed with a strongly artistic nature, tend to find that they NEED to work at their art for a very large proportion of the time. Not being able to do so creates a yawning feeling of loss and lack of meaning.

Artists tend to be people who are unusually sensitive in one area of human experience or another. They therefore experience certain types of discord and dissonance (which may not be noticeable or problematic to most people) as intensely painful. This produces an inner need to find a resolution to that conflict through their work.

This is why so many of us struggle with what are, on the face of it, your very sensible suggestions. It is well known by career councillors that people who score very highly on artistic traits are the hardest to help. This is not because they’re being awkward or there’s something wrong with them. It’s because their needs don’t fit easily or straightforwardly into the world of commerce and work. In fact often artists wish that they were free of their gifts and of the demands these place on them, but discover they have no choice but to submit.

To do serious creative work is hugely demanding, and not romantic at all. It is 99% hard graft, and a lot of the time it is not fun or pleasurable. Money may often be tight. One has to go deeper into oneself and ones resources than one imagined to be possible.

What makes it worthwhile is that from that process of struggle and search for meaning and resolution, people find unexpected insight and beauty which they can then bring back to the world. This offers new vision and inspiration for everyone. It is, in the end, a profoundly social thing.

Helping artists to create a satisfactory career path that fully honours the primacy and importance of art in their lives while enabling them to make a reasonable living is rather specialised work. There is a good book by Carol Eikleberry called “The Career Guide for Creative and Unconventional People” which is a good starting point for anyone interested in looking further.

Best wishes,

James.

peace
Mark