Your job is to be in the studio from at least 9 till 5, if not more.  If you don’t want to do that, then you shouldn’t be an artist in the first place.  But networking is a big part of it.  When you’re not in the studio, you’ve got to get out there. — Cristin Tierney, art advisor.*

So I guess I should just give up now.

Seriously.  What kind of an expectation is this?  Clearly Ms. Tierney only knows famous artists, or the independently wealthy kind.  And the rest of us, who need our day jobs and want to see our kids and maybe, just maybe, want to do something else every now and again, can go hang.   Well, expletive deleted to that.  That’s the attitude I was taught way back in art school and in my early years working in the art world, and it’s a big reason I gave up trying to earn money making art in the first place.  Poverty is no fun, and anyway I personally need life experiences to draw from…and if I’m eating, sleeping, breathing art, well, things can get pretty circular.   Pretty soon I’m making art about making art, and that’s just not what I’m about.

Once I got over being ticked off, though, I started to think about a bigger issue:  can you be serious about a discipline (art, sport, medicine, the law, whatever) if you only devote part of your time to it? I’ve had this discussion with a couple of other artists recently, and I think what it boils down to is the goal.  Not making a living, not being an art star…but maybe, someday, making a work of art that might be remembered.   The old saw about talent being nine tenths perseverance is true, though.  A regular, ongoing commitment to a studio practice is crucial.  But can that leave room for other things?  I think — ok, I hope — so.    The image above is a detail of a painting that developed in my mind while I was watering my community garden plot, and if I hadn’t been spending my evenings there, I couldn’t have made it.  Even if I say it who shouldn’t, that would have been a shame.

But let’s open the discussion:  what do you think makes the difference between a professional  fine artist and a hobby painter?

*The quote is from a sidebar in Jackie Battenfield’s The Artist’s Handbook:  how to make a living doing what you love, Da Capo Press, 2009, which is actually a pretty useful book.  Can’t say if Ms. Battenfield shares Ms. Tierney’s opinion!