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?

And then yes, there’s people who come from money and don’t have to take on such a workload because they can afford to get by on two gigs a month.

The ones on tv are a minuscule percentage, just like the famous authors you will know and see in the media.

An artist used to live across the road form me and I knew his wife quite well. His works sold for minimum 10k. So whilst he wasn’t super famous he made a decent living.

Second the posts re family money/inheritance/trusts - most people just keep quiet about it. There’s actually no way of knowing what someone’s finances are like unless you have direct access to their bank accounts.

An artist used to live across the road form me and I knew his wife quite well. His works sold for minimum 10k.
If they are sold through exhibition, they tend to have to pay something like 40% commission.

@RazzleDazz1e

Second the posts re family money/inheritance/trusts - most people just keep quiet about it. There’s actually no way of knowing what someone’s finances are like unless you have direct access to their bank accounts.

Sometimes, but equally sometimes you do know. DH’s uncle is an artist and I know there wasn’t family money because...there wasn’t family money. I know my Czech employer escaped from Prague in 1985 with nothing. And sometimes you know because you knew the person when they were still struggling and have seen their pool of buyers grow. Also sometimes you go to an exhibition and the combination of 4 figure price labels and red stickers tells you they have turned over a lot of money at that show alone.

I think there are parallel worlds of artists. I absolutely know the world of nepotism and trust funds described above exists, I have seen it in my former career. However thinking about it I don’t think any of the working artists I know these days fit into that category.
DH’s uncle is another example. He paints fast things- planes, trains, cars. You can see how someone who has spent half a million on a sports car might be willing to drop another few k on an original painting that they feel captures the style and speed of their new toy.
In our house we call this sort of thing pitching your tent by the money river.

My aunt is an artist, she has always needed a part time job to fund herself despite being a successful as an artist in the sense that her work costs hundreds of pounds and is shown in top galleries, in the press etc. I think people don't realise she also works in admin during the week as she doesn't bring it up and they never ask.

Mostly come from money. Not always but usually.

All the artists I know do it out of passion alongside paying work like teaching, care, yoga classes and the like to cover the bills.

Artist is a euphemism for trust fund brat with a paintbrush.

People will pay a surprising amount for stuff that they deem aesthetically pleasing. Dh works in a sort of creative field. I wouldn't call him an artist, because he does other things too, but he does do some sculptures. He had someone commission a dragon sculpture for their back garden. I think in the end it was close to £7000. You sell a few of those a month and you can see how people can be living quite comfortably. Really, sell one of those a month and you're pretty set. The art stuff is only a small portion of what he does but he earns over 100K. No inheritance, started with about £2000 worth of equipment while working a full time job and a tiny workshop in someone's barn.

There are a lot of people with a lot of money to spend on stuff that isn't even practical and especially during COVID people have been spending like mad as those kinds of people are the ones at the top who haven't been affected by furlough and job losses and all things your average working person has been struggling with.

Don't underestimate the power of inheritance. It frees people up to do all manner of things.

@bellropes

Don't underestimate the power of inheritance. It frees people up to do all manner of things.

None of the artists i know have trust funds or inheritances As i said uncle was a head of a well known art school before he gave it up to rely on his water colours. Another relative made a living from Stained glass , she was from a very poor family The sculptors husband has his own business, but she has had some important commissions , so i suspect makes quite a bit from those

bruffin he sold through his own website and had no problem selling works.

I know several artists and none of them makers a fortune. Most have steady jobs with more or less stable income and do art as a hobby and some are full-time artists who work around the clock and still don't get lots of money, but they aren't quitting because they love their work. My friend is a full-time photographer who struggled through the pandemic for obvious reasons and she had to do much more than before to just make ends meet. She was doing photo calendars and custom prints on request, created Smartshow 3d videos for her clients' family celebrations, started her own online courses for photography novices, was selling presets, etc. So yeah, if the person isn't lucky enough to have a good inheritance or another job and just does art then funding themselves could be really difficult.

I haven't encountered any jobbing artists with huge expensive properties. It's worth noting that historically artists are among the very first "gentrifiers", moving to places no-one else will consider because property there is cheap enough to have studio space. So some older artists may have bought in (eg) Peckham or Hackney in the eighties when no-one else wanted to live there.

the artists I've encountered do a lot of work through commissions, and also sell low-cost high volume things like greetings cards and giclee prints as well as original pieces. They undertake wider arts-related stuff, like museum and education projects and workshops, in order to fund what they choose to do.

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

Gosh, you don't suppose that the ones on the TV are the tiny handful of artists who are commercially very successful do you? And that most are not?

I mean, next you'll be telling us that Beyonce does not represent all singers and you're bemused how she's so rich when your one who sings down the pub has to work in Tesco to pay rent?

I know a lot of authors. Almost all of them have another job- even the ones who win prizes. Usually it’s teaching creative writing at some university, or school visits. In particular, the literary fiction doesn’t pay well. Thriller writers live the dream though!

Dh Musician and me Entertainer, we are broke.
He's a leader in his field, famous, and sought after the world over.
We are still poor.
It's not something you go into if you want a luxurious lifestyle.
Even tv work and recording doesn't pay an awful lot.

My 9 year old has artistic promise (which is the only thing about her which makes us think we brought home someone else's baby). We encourage her, let her draw and paint and bought a book for inspiration/ help with perspective. But I think a lot about how that could manifest in a job. People aren't always going to buy a lot to put on the walls, handmade jewellery / glass seems to have more promise. I guess it's a case of go to college, learn everything, follow the opportunities and be clever at spotting a gap in the market.

@cmeredithc

Thanks for sharing, that's so interesting. I can't imagine the effort and unpaid hours it takes to get to this level too.