Do you know any people with talents in music, art, performing, writing, etc… that are either
Please share.
The ones I know who did 5 (which is not a large group) succeeded by no longer doing art that they enjoyed, but instead doing art that the market demanded.
People think being an artist is all about self expression and finding a way to express your inner world. But for a lot of people who want to make a living in it, it quickly becomes about finding out what people with money demand and finding a way to give it to them. This even applies to some highly successful musicians. There are some hard rock musicians who deep down inside would rather be doing country music, blues or jazz but the money was in rock for example.
I’ve known several people who were 4. I met several when I worked in a factory. Nothing wrong with being a 4.
Dolly Parton once said it best “I did the music I didnt want to do until I got to the point I could do the music I wanted to do”.
I love Dolly Parton, but she was one of the lucky few. Most extraordinarily talented people find they must continue to do the music they don’t want to do forever.From all I’ve read, Ms. Parton would agree that that’s usually the case.
I am a sometimes struggling sometimes thriving artist for a living. I do mostly murals full time but I also do sign work, portraits, illustration and graphic design. Again, my main gig is murals and I paint pretty much every week. I’m on my first day off in 2 weeks after finishing a big project where a client 2000 miles away found me to do a project for them.
I am part of my city’s (the state capital) pre-qualified pool of known and vetted professional artists which keeps me busy. I also “whore out” and help other professionals on big projects for a lot less money than I make on my own when I don’t have anything else going on.
It’s hit-and-miss, sometimes I really struggle to make ends meet, other times I’m too busy to keep up with it all. I’m starting to become well-known and have an online and social media profile that is easily googled and like I said before gets hits from out-of-staters for big projects. (MyCityMurals.com–how did no one think of that before me??)
I have work that’s been bootlegged for merch sold by out-of-state companies. It came to light after someone came up with a mug w my mural on it from a gift shop they found. I’ve had to sign waivers for my work to be used in documentaries, magazines and on TV shows. One of my murals was location B-roll for a reality show a few years back, and will be featured in an upcoming Travel Channel program. That mural has it’s own webpages by entities I have no affiliation with. I’ve also been contacted for release for college curriculum studying sites of Route 66 by a professor in Ohio.
…but it’s still a constant struggle. Painting on a wall for a living is just a really hard thing to make a living at when you mostly work locally or at least in-state.
I have a friend that took his passion for art and has turned it into two separate businesses - one teaching art to local, national, and international students, partnering with schools and armed forces for 1-2 week seminars across the globe, and another working with disadvantaged teens who have an interest in the restaurant industry, partnering with local restaurants to work with cooks and chefs on the realities of running a working kitchen.
The first group ends with 2-5 art shows per year, where each of the students display their work and can sell any pieces they want, for whatever price they want. The second group always ends with a fully-coursed meal, with each student developing, preparing, and presenting one course. All the proceeds from the sold art go directly to the students, and the proceeds after paying food cost and mildly compensating the restaurant and staff also goes to the students.
He’s been working for years to teach young, passionate people that just being a good artist or cook isn’t enough - you have to have the business skills and work ethic and just plain good luck to truly succeed in these professions. At the end of the day, the kids get paid, and one of the most valuable lessons is how to value your own product.
He also has the ability to pay his bills with his own artwork, several pieces I proudly display in my own home. He’s that damn good. But even now, it’s a hustle. Finding money as schools and states cut art funding - not for him, but for the supplies and materials for the students - is the top challenge every year. Fortunately, he has the connections and inability to accept failure to make it work, at least so far.
I know personally tons of 1, 2, and 4s. Living in LA for 20ish yrs, my contacts list is full of them.
My grandson is a 4. He is fascinated by theater and would do anything to make it there. I think he would really prefer being a director, but he can act, sing, has written at least one musical (including the songs, words and music) that he produced and directed. Right now he works at, I think, trader Joe’s doing whatever and gets directing gigs from time to time that pay little or nothing. He also writes theater criticism, which gets published in local papers.
My nephew does #1. He’s a very talented musician trying to make it in LA, but then so are thousands of others out there.
I’ve 3 other artist friends who do #4. One did subsist solely on their art for quite a while, but desired the finer things in life, like food and shelter.
I have a friend that is a writer.
Her husband supported her, both financially and emotionally, when she quit her nursing job to write full time.
She is a published author now, albeit a minor one. You’ve probably never heard of her unless you are a fan of a certain type of “small town” contemporary romance novel.
Now I always figured a writer like that would make a decent living without working a second job, but it didn’t think it would be much more than that. I’d heard enough about struggling writers and greedy publishers to assume only a lucky few ever made real money.
So I was kind of floored when my friend told me she consistently makes over a million dollars a year. She receives about 300K per novel and she publishes 4 or 5 a year.
She insisted that her husband quit his job ( it wasn’t really anything he enjoyed ) and now she supports him.
I have a friend who is largely supporting her husband as he pursues his musical career. They look at it like any other small business gamble–it may pay off really well, it may not, but it’s worth it to experiment. If it doesn’t work out, he can go back to his square job. They do have a time line.
I also know a family where one brother is a professional musician, currently with a symphony in Germany, and the other is a commercial photographer. The whole family is full of professional artists and designers, and many of them do very, very well. I don’t think it’s so much a genetic tendency toward talent and more a culture that values the arts and sees them as a viable career. Kids who like an art or have an aptitude are encouraged to pursue it at a very high level and no one disparages the concept of earning a living based on art. At the same time, though, the family is very practical and it’s very much about finding a way to create art people want to pay for, not just following passions blindly.
I once read an article in a fine woodworking magazine about four guys who were making a living doing fine woodworking: one-of-a-kind art pieces, fancy furniture, etc. The common denominator was that they all had wives with good jobs. 
I knew one such person who gave up multiple career type jobs to pursue his failing artist desire. He lived like shit, living with his invalid father in a rented house, sleeping on a mattress on the floor.
His passion to pursue his dream caused him to quit several ‘real jobs’ live on public assistance and ultimately die of poor health.
I have to admit that I have a hard time respecting his decisions to essentially drop out of a productive, comfortable and healthy lifestyle to make a go at his art. I suspect he was basically lazy and didn’t want to put in the effort to have a typical career nor work hard enough to put in his dues in becoming successful in his artistic talents
I wonder what % of artistic types actually make a reasonable living at their art.
These are made up numbers, but I’m guessing its something like
90% have a real job (4 listed in OP)
8-9% have a spouse or inheritance to support them
1% actually make a living off their art
In music, apparently its <5% who live off their art.
However, I’m not sure what ‘making a living means’. Does that mean a decent house in a good neighborhood or does it mean a shared 2 bedroom apartment and a car that breaks down?
I have three examples that come immediately to mind, all of them people I know well.
He’s spent the past 30 years pursuing his art as his passion, and making pretty much no money at it; he has always had a job that lets him (barely) keep the bills paid – for the past 15 years or so, he’s done custom framing at various arts/crafts stores, like Michael’s. He’s married, and his wife has a similar, low-income job. They struggle to make ends meet, and he’s spent most of the past 30 years being resentful over the fact that he can’t make a good living doing what he loves to do.
They’re both now in their mid 50s, and both of them are in poor health. They have no health insurance, no savings, and at least 50% of their posts on Facebook are about their health issues or their budget issues, as they are continuously leaning on the charity of friends to keep their “dream” alive.
He quit the customer service job after about two years, as he found it so disheartening. He went back to teaching full-time, and he now has a fiancee who makes good money, so he isn’t in as dire straits as he was a few years ago.
So, of my three friends, and looking at the OP’s categories:
I was a #1 for a couple years after college while trying to be a 5, but at a certain point decided that I wanted a decent place to live and three square meals a day on a consistent basis and became a 4. When things went to shit in 2007 I became a 2. I’m back to a 4 and planning another try at being a 5.
My spouse started as a 4, then became a 3 after he was laid off and I had a decent job (during a period when I was a 4). After several years struggle he became a 5, except he didn’t live long enough to retire.
I’ve know a LOT of people from all of the above categories, in all areas of the arts.
That doesn’t have to mean that they weren’t making a meaningful contribution to the family income. Today, you need the spouse with a steady income as much for health insurance as anything–as well as to have a steady income, rather than one that fluctuates. I know couples where the “erratic” income is higher than the steady job income, but they couldn’t risk the former if they didn’t have the latter (and, again, health insurance.)
I’ve known lots of 1 - 4 (mostly musicians). I’ve worked with a couple of #5s (more or less) professionally; one full-time working Grammy-winning musician and one NYT bestseller writer. Both basically have to be full-time entrepreneurs and run their own small businesses managing and promoting their various projects; they aren’t the kind of people who work for employers with paid benefits, but both are doing just fine financially and really love what they do.
Yeah, that was my spouse and me - when you have someone with spina bifida who later develops diabetes on top of it health insurance is not optional. Some years he made 4 times what I did, but it was my job that brought the health insurance to the household.
We’re all in our mid-late 50s
Me, I had regular jobs while I played on the side until I had kids and ‘the side’ no longer existed 
. I still play, but only for my own enjoyment and edification. The instrument I grew up with and was best at was drums and now I play guitar mostly.
One friend lives in a western tourist town. He plays western country & jazz at a half-dozen or so places and occasional festivals but I can’t imagine he makes what would be considered a living at it. He has a girlfriend with a regular job, they live pretty simply, and he doesn’t have kids so his expenses aren’t as great as most folks our age.
Another friend worked for a sports film outfit for a number of years with all the benefits and then lit out on his own. From what I can tell business is sporadic but pays well when he gets it. His wife is a licensed practical nurse so I imagine benefits and stability go through her now. Their kids are out of school so there’s probably less stress along those lines.
The guy who got me started playing drums toured and recorded with some mid-level acts and taught at a NYC music school (not a university). I guess at some point that began to taper off and he got his masters degree and now teaches in the public school system and still gigs on the side. Since he’s working for public schools I imagine he gets benefits. His wife is a nurse, too, so I think they’re covered one way or the other. I guess he would be the closest person I know to a 5.
My niece (younger than us) who’s more of a musical theater person just ended two (or was it three?) years of teaching music at the Aramco compound in Saudi Arabia. She made enough to travel all over the world and pay off her student loans in pretty short order. Now she’s back home contemplating the next step. Teaching music in school really isn’t on the list though.
I could be wrong about much of this, as I haven’t really quizzed them about their financial arrangements.