My story. My love story. My struggle as a starving artist.
Let me tell you something. My story. My love story.
My struggle as a starving artist.
I myself am about to “give up”. Honestly. Because just last night, someone I have fallen deeply, madly in love with only a few months ago (at age 47 mind you, it’s only happened twice in my entire life) told me, after two already very incredibly painful breakup cycles:
“I know that Rome wasn’t built in a one day” but I’m also realistic…. if I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel – I just walk away”
and then a few messages later:
“I need my partner to have a proper job”.
I think part of the reason she was smitten in the first place was that she thought I looked more successful than I am online. She is the one that bought one of the only artworks that I have ever sold. At least in the van den hooven style, which I have now more or less settled upon. The other one I sold to my mother of all people (for under $100). It’s true I have sold some other art on my Etsy shop for a few hundred dollars here or there (total).
Right? People, she is absolutely right, I cannot live on this little money, it’s just practically impossible. I have tried hard to find spare time to do this art and bring it to you, the public. The good news is that I am having an inaugural exhibition at the Bay Pavilions Clyde Gallery next August (2025).
But will it be enough? I need money now not in two or three months’ time!! Otherwise, I may just lose something very very dear to me, and I won’t have the enthusiasm, motivation and positive mental energy required to actually create more art for the foreseeable future.😔
It’s very unfortunate that people don’t seem to value living artists today (enough to actually buy enough of their work that is to support them). I mean it’s one thing to actually visit a gallery. But you need to actually purchase art to support living artists, not just look at dead people’s art at the National Gallery of Australia or the Art Gallery of NSW.
Even musicians get paid waaay more than us because they have gigs. If we artists and creative people get full-time so-called “proper jobs”, we don’t always have the time, motivation and energy to be creative, to do the marketing and networking and administrative work required to actually be a successful full time (or even part time) artist, and we simply… give up. 🙁
Some of us may even become hopelessly depressed. You can probably tell by my style of art that I’m very conflicted at the moment. And if I get dumped a third time around because of my financial situation, I’m likely to just commit myself to a mental hospital (again). Seriously.🥴
It shouldn’t have to be like this. That an artist’s mental health suffers that much before they are ready to “give up” and just get a more normal stable job. I thought I was doing alright, I’m exercising and I’m no longer taking any anti-depressant medication. I haven’t been taking them for well over a year in fact.
I am absolutely convinced that there are probably thousands of “Van Goghs” out there that literally didn’t make it. They didn’t just “commit suicide”, they’re also unknown on top of that. How bad is that? I don’t want to do that. I just want to make and more importantly sell art. That’s it.
If I have to get “a proper job” so to speak, for one thing, I won’t have the free time needed to organise professional exhibitions (because I’m also a part time unpaid carer).
I’ll just have to quit on one, two or all three of my dreams. One of my other dreams was to design professional logos for businesses ( where I further specialise in designing animal logos). The other “dream” if you like was to sell hand made zero waste ecological/biodegradable consumer products such as computer mouse mats and programmable NFC electronic luggage tags. 😀
All of these things help me to be a better, happier, more successful ‘me’ that hopefully one day can become completely financially independent, with a mostly fulfilled concept of “ikigai”. Someone that literally leaps out of bed in the morning! Unfortunately, I’m not quite there yet, if people don’t buy my products or services, which I was hoping would subsidise my art (or even vice versa), I’m afraid there is not much to leap out of bed for.😟
So if that happens, if I have to quit on or all of my personal dreams, in order to be with the person I love, I would thus have to make a terrible sacrifice, which comes at great personal cost, and I’m afraid I will not be able to make it as an artist.
And then, my so-called “ikigai” will be gone. I won’t be as happy and she’s probably dump me anyway for being miserable and depressed all the time stuck in quite possibly the wrong job. Poof! Goodbye! I’ll be a torn man forever. Should I have dropped everything for love? Or not?
My late father used to tell me “If you don’t ask you don’t get”. So what I would like more than anything right now is for someone, anyone, to buy one or two of my two most expensive artworks, preferably not just one of the mere $200 ones mind you, which isn’t going to change my financial situation significantly enough, but one of the $2000 dollar ones like this one, so I can can go back to her and tell her “I do have a proper job!”. 🤪Otherwise, I don’t know what I’ll do. Of course, buying any artwork is obviously veeery much appreciated. But in that case I’d need to sell one every week, not one every year.
I wish someone would just… buy my more of my art… is it too much to ask? I love to create it. But for some reason people don’t love to buy it quite so much.🤔 Now I have tried extremely hard to network, I’ve connected with all what I thought were the wealthy influential businesses on my instagram account and such. I am fast losing hope. I don’t want to work in a fried chicken shop, I believe I’m worth so much more than that. I’d almost rather die. I have way too much inner drive, passion an ambition.😐
I am getting a bit tired with the world not taking me seriously enough. People, you don’t know the personal struggles I have gone through to bring you this art. You just… don’t know. I thought some of the people in my town might get the hint when I stuck a sticker on every single metal pole in the local carpark. But apparently not.
Do I have to try to hawk my wares outside the local Woolworths or travel all the way to the city and try to sell my wares on some busy street corner? It’s probably illegal anyway…