The world needs artists and creatives. Unfortunately, being needed doesn’t often easily translate into financial stability. The struggle is real for so many incredibly talented artists and creatives and so we think it’s important to hear from creatives who have made it work – there is so much to learn from the folks we’ve featured below.

Kayleigh Mathews

Oh wow, this is a good one! I moved to Nashville March of 2017 bright eyed & bushy tailed thinking as soon as I moved everything would fall right into place. Well, that wasn’t exactly what happened! I couldn’t find a job for two months and felt like maybe I made a HUGE mistake. I left an incredible job & everyone I love back home in Arizona. Read more>>

Sarah Folsom

When I was just beginning my career as a professional musician, I thought that success would be achieved in one magical moment, like flipping a light switch. If I could just make it to that one big mountaintop, all of my hard work would pay off all at once, and I would suddenly be “successful.” I also thought that being a full-time professional musician meant that I would just do one thing, all the time, really really well. In the ensuing years of building a full-time living from my artistic work, Read more>>

Eddie G

Yes, I’ve been able to earn a full-time living from my creative work. Well, when I first started writing I was doing it as a hobby when I was working my 9-5 job in the IT field. I would give myself a page count on how many pages I would write a day when I got home from work. Sometimes I would meet that page count, and some days I wouldn’t. The most important thing to me was that I wrote every day, whether it was one page or ten pages I was writing every day. Read more>>

Bennie Bates

This is funny actually because I never planned to be a photographer. In fact, I’m the very beginning, probably 6 years ago, I refused to call myself one because I didn’t feel I was worthy of the title. I had bought a friends camera and was simply interested in creating higher quality Instagram content for myself (if you can believe that).. Fast forward to now, I’ve quit my Full-Time job working on an ambulance to do freelance photography. Read more>>

Mike Durkee

I make a full-time living with art. It took a long time to get here. I had a full-time job that I slowly grew out of as I was taking on more freelance projects on the side. Everything changed when a coworker recommended that I paint a mural for his friend’s Asian street food restaurant. They needed a 24 foot white wall in their dining area transformed to capture their vibe. Read more>>

Christine Crawford

Being able to earn a full-time living from our creative work has been nothing short of a challenging and exhilarating journey. I think becoming full time muralists was never a path we thought we would land in. Allison was miserable in her 9-5 job and decided to quit to pursue being self employed. Her background was in art so she decided to go that direction but wasn’t sure that it would be murals. Initially the uncertainty was kind of stressful but the freedom was really rewarding. Read more>>

Meghan Rosenthal

The day my youngest child went to Kindergarten in 2021, I unknowingly started my art business. It was mostly out of desperation to call something my own after being a stay-at-home parent for eight years and helping two kids with virtual school during the first part of the pandemic. It was freeing to channel my former artistic abilities and training into a creative hobby that might make a little money. Encouraged by friends and family, I painted a few pieces, put them on Instagram, and somehow people found me. Read more>>

Jessica Lynn

I have been very fortunate to build my career in to something that is full-time, however, it has nothing to do with luck but rather, persistence, hard work, sacrifice and a lot of dedication. Growing any career is a never-ending task full of many twists and turns and rollercoaster of highs and lows. We cannot be just artists, but must have an entrepreneurial spirit to accomplish making a creative career a real business. It took me many years to be able to make a living off being a musician and an artist and it has not been easy. Read more>>

Austin Jackson

Earning a living off of creative work might not be as glamorous as it first seems. When I first started with photography, I looked at it as a side hobby. After doing it for a while, and finding a few ways to turn my hobby into a side hustle, I decided that I wanted to do photography full time. However, in order to make this happen, I quickly realized that you needed multiple sources of income. Unfortunately, just taking nice pictures didn’t pay the bills. Read more>>

Justin Willet

I started freelancing in 2007 as a photographer and graphic designer and then later started offering web design as well. When I first started pursing this full time I would go work all day with my cousin doing home improvement work and then come back at night and design websites, t-shirts, edit photos, etc. This allowed me to have the flexibility to accept projects as they came but also make some consistent income while growing my business. Read more>>

Sarah Kelsey

In the summer of 2014, fresh from a divorce and living with my parents, I was fairly strapped for cash but still wanted to make a statement on the weekends at the horse shows I was competing at. I had a rather nice barrel racing mare named Josie (East Bound Jet) who provided some residual income for me on the weekends by pulling checks, and I decided to use some of that money to start embellishing my own shirts at my mothers kitchen table. Read more>>

Racquel Wyatt

Let’s start with the fact that being a creative is hard work. Being a full-time creative can be even more difficult. I spent 10.5 months as a full-time creative before I made the decision to go back to school for more undergraduate degree. That time period stretched me as an artist & as a business woman. I thought that within 6 months I would certainly be wealthy off of my work alone, but the reality is, Read more>>

Jibri Ross

My abilities to be able to share my creativity with the World are Magical. I’ve been able to accumulate a Lucrative Business, Inspire a Community who my creativity motivates, and Sharpen my Passion. In 2020, I took a diving leap on fate to peruse my career as a hairstylist. My passion has always been in helping people, so when when my time was up as a Teacher I felt so torn. My client were my students, their parents, and I grew fond of that bond we created. But that’s when it hit me. I started to wonder if I could take it further. I could Still create those bonds outside of those relationships built as a teacher. It was the fear of not knowing where I would start in a pandemic that had me in a chokehold. Read more>>

Marina Arriola.

Currently, I am able to make a full-time living from my creative work. It began with hand-printing stickers and hand-sewing stuffed animals in high school. I would give the plushies away as gifts, and sell the stickers to my classmates. I was part of an arts magnet program, where we were pushed to apply to accredited art colleges and pursue a BA in a creative field. By the time I graduated high school, I had tried my hand at vending a couple times, selling alongside my older friends who had bought their own booths and would sublet space for $20 or so. Read more>>

Andrew McNeill1

Earning a full-time living as a musician has definitely been my reality for quite some time, and I definitely don’t take it for granted. Its definitely been an imperfect journey to get to that point, so I guess I could share what worked for me. The journey to get there looks different for every creative, but I would say mine involved an incredible amount of patience and risk-taking. That mixed with working incredibly hard with a student mentality can yield some good results. Read more>>

Victoria `Banks

It’s a constant, necessary adaptation to earn a living as a songwriter. Royalty rates have changed so much with the advent of streaming services that a song that used to earn $70,000 with a million record sales now earns $1200 with a million streams. I spent more money to go to the Grammy awards this year than I earned on the record I was nominated for. As a result, I’ve explored many other ways to use my songwriting skills. Read more>>

Samantha Miller

This chapter of my life is title, “Allowing Myself to Figure it Out”. I am openly and honestly seeking truth in regard to where I am in my journey, what brings me joy, what’s working, and what’s not. From the moment I decided to peruse a career in the arts, I knew I had a fight ahead of me. I think being honest with yourself, especially about what’s not working and why is very important. I am at a bit of a crossroads in my career. Read more>>

Sarah Rocheleau

My journey to being able to earn a living doing something creative started in a surprising place. I had been out of art school for since 2009 and got a job that was downright abusive. At some point I decided with the help of a supportive partner, that I was going to make being an artist work for me so I got a small studio at the Pendleton art center and started to show there. Interestingly, I now show in the studio of an artist I admired in college. Read more>>

Kimmi-K Smith

As a Brand Ambassador I have made some really good money. I no longer work as a Brand Ambassador full time, just part time however the income does pay very well. & never took NO for an answer. The road was not easy, but i just kept going. When I first started doing Promotional/Brand Ambassador work it was so intimidating, I would get to an event and just stay back very quiet. Now I am at events smiling asking what can I do to help? Making sure the client is very pleased with my work, so that i can keep getting booked. My work ethic, my determitation, positive attitude is what contined to get me booked with the same company. Read more>>

Aaron Norris

Yes i have been fortunate enough to be able to earn a living from my creative work. Having a background in videography and photography. Barbering was somthing i did while attending college at UNIVERSITY OF MOUNT OLIVE. i was cutting hair for my teammates and guys in the dorms as well as other teams, it was that connection and clientele out of school that helped me continue my practice. Fast fowarding to my Barber School days over at Wake Tech, with the love of photogrphy and video it was then when i began making videos and content provinding a sense of hollywood “Lights,camera, action”. Read more>>

Kelly Anderson.

Have you ever seen the entertainer guy with the trampoline and a pair of stairs next to them? You can probably find it on YouTube. The gentlemen bounces up and down the stairs in a fluid motion. Sometimes he bounces up a few the falls down one bounces up four, falls down five, bounces up 2, falls down and bounces back to the same spot. Ultimately fluidly moving up and down the stairs visually representing the natural progression of life and hard work. Read more>>

Lisa Erbacher.

I have been making jewelry for a very long time. I always had a full time career and did the jewelry in the side. Just within the last year did I decide to go full time. It’s difficult and could not do it without the support of my husband. But, I’m hopeful and my husband believes in me. Read more>>

Drew Blood

Never in my life did I think it was possible, but I’m now at a point in my career where I can comfortably live off of my art completely. I’ve always been told my whole life that art is a luxury and not a means of monetary sustenance .
But because the tattoo industry has been growing so rapidly in the last decade, it has helped the general public connect more with it. 10 years ago, you would have to go to bars or hand out business cards to people to give to their friends, which is a hope that you’ll get someone in the door. Read more>>

Rye Von

I started my journey as a full-time balloon artist in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Prior to this leap of faith I worked as a social worker serving the City of Indianapolis. In the beginning it was difficult to generate the income needed to drive the business partly due to the pandemic and partly due to the fact that I was very novice. I decided to pivot and focus on home deliveries since people were unable to have parties to celebrate their momentous occasions. Read more>>

Courtney Holly

I graduated college with a BFA in Acting back in 2015 knowing full well that I’d more than likely have to get a “day job” as I began my professional journey. Some of those day jobs were horrendous, and some were absolutely wonderful, but at the end of the day, I had to muster the energy to focus on my creative endeavors. This was far from acceptable for me. My husband (boyfriend at the time), a professional audio engineer (who specializes in mix engineering) and I both were looking for extra ways to bring in an income so we combined forces and I started auditioning in the voice-over world. Read more>>

Dominique Cuzzone

I met my mentor, Kristen Miller, from a tattoo she decided to gift me as a cover up. We were complete strangers on the internet but we followed each other. She reached out with this beautiful design offering myself to come in and get rid of the bad tattoo I had on my leg. Once I was in her chair we started discussing life, I asked her how she had gotten to be a tattoo artist herself as I was interested in pursuing an apprenticeship for myself in the future. I showed her some of my art and she told me how she would like to one day take on an apprentice. Read more>>

Tree Lily Butcher

Born in Nashville, TN, I knew what I wanted to be very early in life: in the words of 7-year-old me, “I want to be when I grow up I will be an artist and a mom because a mom is the best job in the world. An artist is a good job too I think because I love to paint pictures.” As a high school student at The Webb School in Bell Buckle, TN, I started my own zine “Sheep Grenade” which caused quite a stir in the small country town due to age appropriate teenage dirtbag obscenity. Through this experimental zine, I found my love of hand-cut collage. Read more>>

Mike Gomez

Creating a full-time income as a working musician is no easy task. At this point in my career, it comes through multiple revenue streams. Gigs, recording sessions and teaching are the main sources, but often production consultations, video and photo jobs as well. It’s busy, but I enjoy it. Read more>>

Amanda Rabourn

I have absolutely been able to earn a full time living with my career. In the beginning, I had to put my time in learning, making mistakes and learning from them. I started at a corporate salon that focused more on quantity than quality. Working at places like this helped hone in my ability to be efficient, work on time constraints and problem solve quickly. I personally wasn’t fully full filled working at a corporate salon and wanted to challenge myself further and focus on color services that gave me more artistic freedom, with larger profit. Read more>>

Lane Collins

I have been fortunate enough to be able to earn a full-time living from my creative work. For me personally, I think the timing for when I started my business couldn’t have worked out any better. I started in high school taking friend’s senior portraits and photos for local families. This allowed me to start small, earn a little extra money on the weekends, and hone in on my skills in order to upscale my business. There wasn’t a lot of financial responsibility at this time in my life. That was such a key asset because unlike a lot of my peers in the industry, I was able to grow a business with relatively no consequences if it didn’t work out. Read more>>

Mary Edna Fraser

I began working as a full time artist in 1979. My first NYC show was 1982. A 10-5 schedule and over 100 one woman exhibitions presently worldwide came with perseverance and struggle. Studying with masters in my field, every work of art had an experiment which moved my knowledge forward. The aerial point of view given by my family’s 1946 Ercoupe aircraft offered a unique base for the silks, oils and monotypes. Read more>>

Louis Chapheau

My ability as an artist to earn a full-time living from my work so quickly came from a combination of good timing and the invaluable skillsets I learned as an entrepreneur. During the first COVID lockdown I needed to continually find new ways to pass the time (as so many of us did). I have always loved art, design, and fashion, and every year for over a decade my father would repeat the refrain “Louis, you really should try painting. Louis, you should really try painting:”. During that first lockdown I finally ran out of excuses to why I should put off trying to paint for another year. Read more>>

Elvis Torres

I have been blessed to be able to earn my full-time living from graphic design. It all started in an unlikely place, that being Kandahar, Afghanistan when I was deployed there at 18 with the US Army. I came across a copy of Adobe Photoshop being sold on a blank disc at market run by locals. I knew there was 50/50 chance that the disc would either be truly blank or feature a copy of photoshop that wouldn’t work on my computer, Read more>>

Crystal Barbee

It’s a funny story really how Crystal Barbee Photography came to be. I’m a natural creative, I feel the eye for photography was something I’ve always “seen”. I noticed lighting, expressions, interactions between couples, friends , children. I knew I wanted to capture that for people… what I saw and felt . So many people overlook the small but beautiful moments that happen constantly around us. When I decided to start a photography company my husband thought I was crazy because I didn’t own a camera, and definitely didn’t know how to use one. Read more>>

Jon Ross

Yes, I am currently working full-time as a visual artist, it is possible to work full-time or even part-time as a creative and make more than just a decent living. It requires quite an investment, just like any other business, starting out you’ll need to dedicate your time, along with all available resources to pursue such a career path, although, like any other business, in due time you can build a scalable operation, similar to what I’ve done. Read more>>

Diana Steffen

We have been able to make our full time career with photography, but it was a journey to get there. My partner and husband Cory have been photographing together since 2012. But being able to work full time has been years in the making. The first 4 years was a lot of learning and shooting as much as we could so we could finesse our style to make it impactful and recognizable. We were figuring so much out on the job. We met in art school so we had been taught that in our industry we are problem solvers as much as we are artists. Read more>>

Frederic Payet

After I moved to the USA in 1989. I started working for my uncle’s gallery in Atlanta GA in 1991. I was not an artist and certainly did not know anything about painting. I was suddenly taken by all the beautiful painting and I had an urge to paint. I bought supply and did my first painting. Intuitively I knew how to mix colors and apply paint. Read more>>

Shelby Monteverde

Yes! My creative journey started many years ago, but I never thought it could actually become a career for me. Of course I have taken many steps and risks along the way to get me where I am today, but those steps wouldn’t have been possible without a specific path being laid out before me to follow. This journey has been one of faith and surrendering rather than building and hustling. The creative journey is just as much about the process as is every painting from start to finish. Read more>>

Espacia Fotiu

I have been able to support myself entirely from my creative work since a graduated high school in 2015. I had an opportunity to sell my work at the Palmer Park art fair in Detroit which lead me to doing art fairs full time. I will forever be grateful for that eye opening opportunity. Read more>>

April Moffatt

I had been working part-time as 6th grade humanities teacher and writing articles part-time for crafting magazines. I had always wanted to be an artist from an early age but believed it wasn’t practical to think I could earn a living from it. About 4 years ago I decided I was going to learn to paint just for myself and see what happened. As I started sharing my work, friends and family started offering to buy my work and requesting commission pieces. Read more>>

Jaszy Mango

It truly has been one of the scariest decisions of my life and also at the same time one of the most rewarding experiences. To be able to live your dream and get paid for it and make a living is completely amazing and I am humbled. I think God every single day, one of the major stepa I will say to everyone is just do it . Have the faith, believe in yourself and just do it. You have to put in the work. Nothing comes free. Make sure you set your goals. Have a vision board,stay steadfast and out of your head . Read more>>

Kevo Aregbe

I am a full time artist. The road to where I have gotten to was tough; featuring being shot, going to jail, being raised in a lower class environment without my parents, to becoming a college MFA grad, professor, and business owner. Read more>>

Kimberly Russo

My love for creating was always there and I knew when I began my career that I wanted to make a career out of being artistic. My entire life I have been creative and just knew it was going to be something that made me happy. Going into college I knew exactly what I wanted to study and the career path that I wanted to go down. Packaging Design is something that has always interested me and it was a perfect fit for me creatively speaking. After graduating from FIT in NYC with my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Packaging Design, Read more>>

Lisa Moore.

I do earn a full-time living from my work as an artist. The journey has been long and short. What I mean by that is I started this with the concept that it was just a little extra income. I did not believe I could do it full time and make it. So I would work in my studio which always paid for itself through my gallery sales and also do some consulting on the side from my former life. Read more>>

Jeston Rodriguez

I have been very fortunate that I was able to start making a full time living from art. When the pandemic hit, I wasn’t able to work at my current job so I had to find another way of making income. I was already doing art shows and markets around Houston, so I just took the time to start making more work and focused on commission work all through 2020. Around October of 2020, I came across another artist in South Dakota on TikTok who was starting to do live wedding painting. It looked like fun, and I felt confident in my abilities to do the same. Read more>>

GiGi Erneta

Yes, I have been working full time as an actor for years. I started performing as a child and formally trained with the Royal Academy of Dance. Studied drama in high school and as a teenager, I booked my first SAG commercial which was for McDonald’s. I did it in both English and Spanish. Being bilingual opened up doors for me a little faster. Read more>>