Real Artists Don't Starve: Timeless Strategies for Thriving in the New Creative Age

her work, Stephanie’s audience responded with the same openness and vulnerability she shared. First they gave their attention; then they gave their money.

before art can have an impact, it must first have an audience.

When we show the world our ideas as they unfold to us, people repay such generosity. Because she shared

When we sincerely offer our gifts to the world, not through hype but by practicing in public, the world often repays us by first taking notice and then responding with loyalty. We get better, earning an audience that will allow us to continue creating for years to come.

Some artists tend to think making money is either a system you sell out to or something to be avoided altogether. But in reality, it’s neither. If you don’t make money, you won’t have any art to make. We must seek to better understand the business of being an artist. Ignoring this reality is the fastest route to stop creating altogether. To be an a

said his goal was to “live like a pauper, but with plenty of money.” The artist’s name was Pablo Ruiz Picasso.

as much as art needs money, money also needs art. The popes and kings of the world are indebted to artists for preserving their legacies via portraits and tombs and all kinds of art. Art and business have always needed each other and worked together over the years. The world we live in today is the result of such a timeless marriage.

Michelangelo’s insistence that the priest call him by his last name was a power play. He was not just another hired hand; he was an artist, a title he spent his life redefining. So the clergyman’s condescending request made the artist set the record straight. Michelangelo was more than a manual laborer, and the priest’s refusal to acknowledge this

Recently I met with Bill Ivey, the former chairman for the National Endowment of the Arts. He told me that we sometimes think the alternative to the Starving Artist is what he calls the Subsidized Artist, but that’s the wrong way to think about it. Art needs money. We can deny it all we want and pretend starving makes for better art, but starving o