Outside Looking Outside | Richmond, Virginia | Sep 2008

From The Online Photographer, on Creative Livings:

For individuals who have an artistic temperament, not practicing art in some way or other can be unhealthy.

Creative work… is an appetite, a need. Trivializing it somewhat, I sometimes call it an itch. … People who have talent and aptitude for art are unlikely to be happy if they’re not incorporating art and artistic creativity into their lives somehow. The problem that remains is that how this relates to making a living is fraught with complexity and ambiguity. For most, art is a poor career.

… You would think that the opposite strategy might work well- that people who aspire to be artists should train themselves for a conventional career, make their piles young, and go on to practice art once they have the leisure for it. … For some reason… success in art is even more elusive for those people.

Why is this? It seems to boil down to failures of either confidence or taste. People who take this track seem locked in dilattantism, as if they cannot take themselves seriously enough, cannot muster enough ambition. They’re content to dabble. Or, they just haven’t engaged enough with art to really get how I works or figure out how to do it. In photography, especially, what seems to trip up most amateurs is a lack of self-confidence.

… it is only by pleasing herself that the artist can ultimately please others. It’s why professionals, whose job it is, after all, to create things that are immediately and obviously pleasing to broad numbers of viewers, are so seldom remembered for their artistry.

… the biggest single problem of a life in art is how to successfully balance creative endeavors with making a living.