Even though the art world can look like an orgy of glamorous openings, record-setting auction prices, lifestyle features, and avaricious rapaciousness, remember that only 1 percent of 1 percent of 1 percent of all artists get rich from their artwork. You may feel overlooked, underrecognized, and underpaid. There’s no getting around it: being poor is hard. And probably 95 percent of all artists are just scraping by. Among the artists I’ve met, though, those who maintain a network of support all live a life that keeps the mind nimble and young, the spirit alive, their art growing and enriching themselves and others who are fortunate enough to see it.
We all struggle—but art lets us plumb even this struggle, makes us clear-eyed about matters of class and social inequity. I’m a writer; I’ve spent much of my life stone broke. Yet I’ve never regretted the life I’ve made, happy amid all this art. Nor have I ever met an artist who regretted being an artist, as difficult as the life can be. This is why Isak Dinesen could write, in “Babette’s Feast,” that “a great artist, Mesdames, is never poor.”