Thoughts on being an artist with a day job | coping with Sunday Scaries

hey welcome to my channel my name is Christina Kent and I'm an artist based out of San Francisco and today I wanted to share my thoughts on being an artist with a day job if you've been following my channel for a while you probably saw one of my other videos where I show my daily routine as an artist with a full-time day job and more recently I was able to switch to taking Fridays off so I had just my day job four days a week and then I had a full Friday in the studio to paint and then even more recently I've been able to switch to halim so now I have my afternoons to paint in the studio which has been really really amazing but I'm still not at the point in my art career where I can quit my day job entirely for now having the extra income for my day job is extremely helpful and before I switch to parttime I was working a day job for a while while doing all my painting on the side and I think this is a really common thing for artists so it's a topic that I wanted to talk about in this video if you're an artist with a day job like me you may have struggled a lot with figuring out how to balance the day job and your art and maybe you might even feel some resentment towards your day day job or feel like it's a waste of time when you have all these creative ideas that you want to do and yet you have to spend a lot of your time doing your day job that may or may not be very related to art and I wanted to make this video because sometimes being an artist with a day job can be really hard and I just wanted to hear other artists talking about this I wanted to see more content about this and how other artists cope and what they think about it um just I thought that that would be really helpful especially on the days when I was really missing my art so what are some of the things that I find helpful for me being an artist with a day job the first thing that I like to think of is I like to congratulate myself on all my hard work and on being able to hold down a day job and also do my art that is no easy feat working a full-time job and pursuing an art career or even if you're not even pursuing a career out of art but you're just really dedicated to your artistic hobby I mean those are two really difficult things to do at the same time so I think if you're an artist and you also have a day job I think that's something to be really proud of like you are basically your own artistic Patron and that's really cool that's not something that everyone can say I take a lot of pride in being able to support myself and my art practice at the same time it's not easy and it's really amazing if you're able to do it the second thing I like to do is I like to try to reflect on the benefits of having a day job um for example for me I found that especially earlier on in my art career and I'm still pretty early in my art career but especially when I was getting back into painting um really trying to find my footing and figure things out um having that day job took the pressure off of my painting I didn't have to depend on my creativity to make money for me and that allowed me to paint without thinking about the Art Market without thinking about well is this going to grow my audience or not so then I was able to paint freely and just kind of paint whatever I wanted and allow my art business to grow in an organic way so that now I don't feel like I have to paint for the market but instead I have an audience of people who really like the work that I want to make and I'm able to sell to them so I'm really thankful for my day job for providing me with financial stability so that I can be free to paint whatever I want and follow my creativity wherever it goes I think especially when we're starting out in our creative path um if we feel so much pressure to sell and especially if we're trying to keep roof over our heads and be able to pay for food and basic necessities and things like that that is just a lot of pressure to put on your creativity and for some people I think their creativity does well with pressure but for me I found that I think um my creativity does best when I feel free when I don't feel like I'm in that scarcity mode where I have to sell paintings but instead I'm free to just explore um whatever I want to explore and my day job gives me the freedom to do that I think it can be really difficult to create authentic and meaningful work if you are just so focused on trying to sell another thing I like to do when I'm feeling a little bit stressed about having a day job and kind of you know pining after being able to spend all my days in the studio is I like to read about famous artists who've had day jobs themselves I think there was this poet um William Carlos Williams who he was not only a great American poet but he was also the chief of pediatrics at this hospital so he had a very serious and involved day job that seemed to have nothing to do with poetry and yet he was still able to make some of the greatest poems we have today I also heard the composer Philip Glass worked as a plumber and had other odd jobs in addition to doing his amazing compositions and when I hear about these examples I I feel a lot better because sometimes I I get the feeling that oh if I want to make great art if I want to be a great artist I need to be in the studio all the time but these examples show that that's not true that you can really make amazing things things on the side in addition to having a day job you don't have to be a full-time artist to make art that is Meaningful another thing that's been really helpful for me um and that can be especially hard if you're working full-time but is still possible is to make time for your art on a regular basis either every day or um if you can't manage every day every week but I would say really try to make time for it every day even if it's something super small like a 5 minute sketch that you do every morning um these small moments can help keep you connected to your creativity and keep that momentum going so that when you do have longer stretches of time to work on your art you'll have that momentum going and be able to Jump Right In I think it can be really intimidating to be away from your creativity for several weeks and then maybe you get a free weekend where you're able to do some painting or do some sketching um but then it's been so long that you feel really intimidated if you're kind of interacting with your creativity every day whether yeah it's a small sketch or a c or even a small painting then it's a lot easier to jump into it when you have these bigger stretches of time I think it also helps for your mental health because you can feel like for me if I if I don't paint for a while I really start to miss it and it really impacts how I feel from day to day and it's crazy how much just a small sketch each day can make such a huge difference in how I feel and sometimes I liken it to being in a longdistance relationship maybe you can't see the person you love every day but you can at least send them some little text messages you can keep the line of contact open um so that you keep that relationship going another thing I like to try to do is to find inspiration from my day job and this can be done even if your day job isn't art related because I think you know our art is based on the the emotions and the experiences and the situations that we face in our lives and so you don't have to be doing an art rated profession to be experiencing things that you can bring into your art there's this really sweet movie called Patterson about a poet who's a bus driver which you would think has nothing to do with poetry um but the movie shows how each day he is observing the interactions of the people on the bus and he's observing what's happening in in his environment and he's using that to draw inspiration for his poems and I think it's just such a great example of how you know inspiration can come from many different sources and even our day jobs can be a great source for our art this can also be helpful if you have negative emotions around your day job a friend of mine would get inspiration for her stories from a coworker who was particularly difficult to deal with so I just think it's really important to keep that in mind to keep your mind open and remember that like all of our Lives relate to our art and um even a day job that doesn't seem art rated can contribute to our artistic practice and kind of in a similar vein I like to try to think about what I can learn from my day job that I can apply to my art career um for examp for example my day job is in economics research and you would think that that's really there there aren't many um there's not much knowledge that translates from that into art but in the course of my work for example I do project management which involves working with clients and figuring out what they like and dislike um discussing what we'll do in our projects and making sure that the clients are happy and I found that this also these like relationship skills that I'm building in my day job also translate to working with galleries working with art Consultants working with collectors and making sure cuz you know these people they're they're like my clients um and I want to make sure that they're happy and make sure that those relationships are going well and that's going to really help my art career so for me even though my day job is not about studying the formal aspects of art I can still learn and build skills that will help me in my art career and my art practice maybe through your day job you're also learning things like how to create a good work routine or how to do project management all these things can be helpful when you are translating them into doing your creative projects and your work colleagues may not be artists themselves maybe some of them are but probably most of them aren't but maybe they really appreciate art and who knows maybe some of them could be future collectors of your work or could help connect you to um others in the art community another thing I found really helpful is to connect with other artists who have day jobs too um like I said being an artist with a day job is really hard it is just so much effort not only to be supporting yourself maybe also supporting your family um and then also supporting your artistic practice that's that's no easy feat so I think it's really important to connect with other artists who are in the same situation as you and then um you can share your experiences and just feel like you're less alone and it's not just you in this situation I find that having a community and knowing I'm not the only one is just so helpful in um in getting through those hard days so those are my thoughts on being an artist with a day job so if you're an artist with a day job like me whether it's full time or part-time or whatever it is I hope this video has been helpful and has maybe made you feel less alone has maybe given you some ideas on um on how to cope better with having your day job and if you have tips on how to manage being an artist with a day job I'd love to hear them in the comments thanks so much for watching and as always a huge shout out to my supporters on patreon you guys are amazing thank you for making these videos happen if you like my art if you like my videos and you want to help me make more check out my patreon at the link below thanks again for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: Christina Kent Art

Views: 4,126

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Id: MXidL46LgWU

Length: 10min 38sec (638 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 24 2023