How do artists (seemingly) make so much money?

[littlepieces]

Can anyone give me some insight into artists' lives and incomes? You hear that artists are poor and paid work is difficult to find/it's hard to sell work. But all the artists you see on TV or in the media have huge houses, and have their own studios in trendy city areas that are the size of my entire flat that I spend half my salary on to rent. How comes they can afford all this on low and unpredictable incomes? I'm fascinated!

I just watched Grayson Perry's Art Club which featured an artist who has been making sculptures out of dead snakes and polystyrene. How does she earn a living from that?

I know someone who is a sculptor. She funds her creative work by taking on well-paid commissions. Organisations have paid her to sculpt trophies, companies have paid her to make sculptures of their creations (e.g. cars, buildings, aeroplanes), wealthy horse owners or farmers have paid her to sculpt their animals. That's the kind of stuff that pays the bills.

The ones on the telly will be successful though!

How are defining artist? If you're able to do that as your only job then again you're very successful.

I know one who is shit at the pr side as it were. Talent is not all you need, if you had the most amazing pics in the world but never showed them to anyone then you'd not be able to make a living iyswim

The other artist I know I would say is successful. Has had commissions for various national arts centres and displayed to the public etc. Not once but quite a lot. Works PT in order to earn enough.

It's very very very hard to get anywhere.

It called catching a break.

I'd say most take commissions as a pp said. I fund my totally for me work with the more commercial work (photography and I'm lucky to love the commercial stuff too) - and for years I worked a full time day job too :)

A fair amount of them will have family connections which bring them regular commissions, and will also have inheritance with which to supplement lifestyle costs.

Can anyone give me some insight into artists' lives and incomes? You hear that artists are poor and paid work is difficult to find/it's hard to sell work. But all the artists you see on TV or in the media have huge houses

You don't think there might be a connection between artists famous enough to be on TV and in the media, and out-of-proportion high incomes?

I reckon Jo Frost is richer than your average childminder, and all.

And I bet Kim and Aggie, and Mrs Hinch, are also making above the odds for people whose incomes are centred around cleaning.

@SarahAndQuack
Sorry, just to clarify I mean just general artists featured in the media, not especially famous ones or ones who also do TV presenting on the side.

Eg. I saw a 'full time' artist who makes sea creature sculptures with metal junk that washes up on the beach featured on something like the One Show or Countryfile recently. She was late 20s and owned her own cottage in Lewes with a massive fancy studio shed and a big chunk of land. Doesn't make sense. Inheritance does make sense I guess though.

I usually assume many people have other income/wealthy partner/inheritance and their art is a lifestyle rather than a job. I am also suspicious that lots of people use the tax credit situation to their advantage (not saying that leads to a lavish lifestyle but an income)

I assume the types of people you are referring to are being supported elsewhere eg wealthy family/partner, inheritance, possibly working a part time job elsewhere they keep quiet about!

That’s about 3% of artists. Lots of them especially musicians right now live on the breadline!
From one gig to another and right now there are zero gigs.

I've wondered this too.

I know a couple who are artists, one of them is "famous" enough to have been interviewed in a national Sunday supplement but I could 99.999% guarantee that nobody on here would have heard of them.

Their work isn't the sort of thing that people buy to display IYSWIM so there's not an income from selling that I can see.

They live in a beautiful big rented house, rent huge studios and the children go to private school. There's no family money behind them that I'm aware of.

They're lovely people and seem to have a lovely life, passionate about art, so its great that they can lead this life but I've always wondered how.

I work in a art organisation and previously for an art centre. Most of the artists I have met, even those that are successful enough for it being their sole occupation, do not have the lifestyle described.
Unless they are massively successful/ well known, I would assume that the funds would come from somewhere else.

This is a really interesting book on the question: Why are artists poor? library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/35101

I know one person who does commercial graphic design on the side, one person who works in a gallery part time to guarantee the rent and one person who is very good at promoting her art. All three feature in the media, but one is also in a lot of interior design magazines and social media influencers post so is working full time on her art when the others are better artists but wouldn't work to get coverage in those ways? But those ways bring in a load of cash!

I think lots of things that rely on an immeasurable talent (arts, sports etc) can vary hugely.
Even the "anonymous" artists featured on countryfile or in the newspaper must be reasonably successful in their field to be easily tracked down.
In a similar vein, look at the lifestyle top sportsmen (and women) lead but how many thousands aspire to that but either fail, or have very limited success on far less money.

Un-measurable that should say

Lots of people working in creative industries are funded by family, inheritance or a partner.

I used to work for a highly successful artist in Europe. She was Czech-German and was mates with Vaclav Havel and had represented her country at the Biennale.
She worked amazingly hard and made wonderful bonkers things and was constantly travelling. She was a pretty incredible person.
Financially, it worked in 2 ways:

1. She had a job as professor at a local university which brought in regular money but was part time.
2. She did high profile exciting commissions of interesting things for major galleries BUT she also made what were essentially less original new versions of her earlier works for rich collectors. I got the impression that these were where her main income came from.

On an absolutely opposite business model, dh and I have a friend who makes a living painting plein air landscapes which sell in the few hundred pounds bracket. It works for him because 1. He paints very fast, he can do a couple in a day and he is never short of inspiration because he paints the sky a lot and the sky is always changing. 2. His pictures are accessible and nice to live with and he paints places where a lot of people go on holiday so people want to buy them.
What he and the other person I posted about have in common is that they are absolutely driven to make art and they have found a niche that people will pay for.

Also, people who have family financing / inheritance may well keep this quiet.

I know two artists. One is from landed gentry and increasingly wealthy. The other is also from a fairly well off background, teaches painting and has famous siblings (actors) (of that makes any difference).

People I met at art school mostly went off and got day jobs. Or ended up working in bloody marketing...

I used to work in a connected industry and had some insight. The successful artists I knew came from enormous privilege (and I suppose thus had the freedom to follow their path rather than having to get a job to pay the bills whilst they were getting established.

It was a huge network of connected old money families, posh galleries and the attendant market ie interior designers / magazine editors who all promoted one another. So yeah, in short, connections

Most artists have to work full time until they become established. The ones you see on TV are established and are doing there art full time and making enough money to support themselves. When you do an art degree they tell you that it's not a way to make money.

Professional musician here, so full-time artist. Those you see on TV/featured in the media are the top 5% earners (or even less) of the arts industry.

Most of us have normal incomes, and yes we’re badly paid because I sometimes work a 16 hour day to receive £100 at the end of it. People want to pay for the end result in terms of quantity (1h concert), without taking into account the dozens of hours of work that goes behind a concert/exhibition/sculpture or whatever the artist has created.

A typical week for me involves 5 days of rehearsing with my main employer for 5-6 hours a day. I then need to practise on my own for a further 3 or 4h every single day. That’s already 10 hours.

I spend around two hours a day doing admin, replying to emails, creating online content, preparing my next rehearsals/projects which involves lots of time score-marking, digging through recordings and listening to them several times... Booking travel and accommodation for the 3-4 gigs abroad I do each month in normal times, and everything being away from home so often involves. Then I need to arrange instrument hire, insurances and transport because I don’t play the violin which could go with me everywhere. I’m self employed so there is tax returns, invoices, expenses monitoring and never-ending filing to do.

Thursday to Sunday are performance days so 6pm-midnight is taken up with that. On the two days I don’t rehearse during the day, I teach or need to attend training courses/receive tuition myself. I need to keep track of my students’ progress, prepare worksheets, remember to book exams and enter them for festivals and competitions, communicate with the parents on a regular basis, on top of showing up on Zoom.

I’m fairly well-known in my field and work with one of the top 3 ensembles in the world, yet I don’t have anyone to prepare my clothes, hair and make up, like artists on TV who just show up an hour before and someone else takes care of it. Dry cleaning, shopping for new concert clothes, making sure I look presentable each night is again on me.

I’ve left many things out but this is why musicians are badly paid compared to the amount of work they do. No other industry would expect you to work 14-16 hours a day regularly, on top of having trained for 20 years beforehand, to then pay you £25k pre-tax at the end of the year.

A few lucky ones get a permanent position in the top companies and can afford to reduce the amount of freelance work they do, as they’ll be earning £50-60k on average. For my particular instrument, there are 3-4 openings worldwide each year, and hundreds of us applying. Chances are next to none.

It’s a tough career but we wouldn’t have it any other way, because nothing else gives me as much joy as walking on stage and doing what I love day in, day out.

DH uncle is a RSW artist and was vice president at one time. He is really old now.
He was a an art teacher until retirement age but mainly survived on commissions. They had a nice converted farmhouse with a studio attached
I also know a sculpture again its commissions