In college, I decided I wanted to make a living doing art—as a profession, not a hobby or a side gig. That meant I'd have to produce work either for the art market or for the commercial world. I chose the commercial world. I spent the next few decades designing theme parks, movie props, products, and toys; illustrating books and covers, presentations, and ads; and painting Disney characters in famous artworks (over 200 by now!).
This was how learned that artists are laborers. We work with our hands. We get paid (more or less) by the hour. Our efforts translate into numbers, like every other worker.
But unlike workers in other professions, artists often feel insecure in their labor. A 2025 report on the National Survey of Artists states that 57% of artists stated they were "somewhat or very worried" about being able to afford "food, housing, medical care, or utilities"; 37% received income from public assistance sources, including Social Security and state or local welfare; 34% of artists are self-employed; 11% "juggled three or more jobs."
One of my first professional illustration jobs: I created all the visuals for an early video game on bass fishing.
And that's not all. Tara McMullen, who writes extensively about the creative economy, says this:
"From my vantage point, gig workers, independent consultants, creators, micro business owners, freelancers, etc., straddle the wide gap between the formal and informal economies. We pay taxes, register our businesses, and try to follow the law. At the same time, at least in the United States, we don't have access to the already inadequate social safety net. We can't apply for unemployment benefits if our businesses go belly up. We can't access worker's compensation benefits if we're injured at work. We pay more for health insurance and save less for retirement."
For a long time, I designed toys, plus, and licensed character merchandise, like this squirting toy for Pinky & the Brain.
As romantic as it sounds to pursue a creative pursuit for a living, it comes with a cost. Very few of us achieve sustainable incomes, let alone long-term wealth. I've been fortunate enough to build a comfortable life through my creative labor. I'm also fairly healthy, I have a partner, and I've lived in places that have opportunities for working artists. But it's never been easy or predictable.
Yet there's another way of looking at it. My investments in my creative studies built a different kind of retirement fund: my lifelong skills. I spent over forty years studying, practicing, and working as an artist so that I could achieve a level of mastery in my work and be able to share these skills with my students.
Of course, it's not like I had a choice. I knew what I was getting myself into—yet I couldn't do anything else. I had to pursue my creative ideas and passions. It was the only thing that made me feel truly alive.
"Forefathers," one of my early Expressionist paintings, as I began to explore my own painting outside of the commercial work.
Here is how Eric Maisel put it in his book, Mastering Creative Anxiety: "Creativity is the word we use for our desire to make use of our inner resources, employ our imagination, knit together our thoughts and feelings into beautiful things such as songs, quilts, or novels, and feel like the hero of our own story. It is the way that we make manifest our potential, make use of our intelligence, and embrace what we love. When we create, we feel whole, useful, and devoted."
A lifetime of doing that? I would have paid any price for it.
Art Heals
Jason DeCaires Taylor creates "underwater sculpture." In this piece, Crossing the Rubicon, "35 people [are] walking towards an underwater wall, unaware that they are heading to a point of no return. They are looking down or at their phones, in an almost dreamlike state. This is a recurrent theme in Taylor’s work – we are sleepwalking towards catastrophe, unable to take stock of our own impact on the natural world and therefore our own survival." I find this inspiring, haunting, depressing, and encouraging, all at the same time. What a creative way to tell a story and get people thinking!
Jason deCaires Taylor, “Crossing the Rubicon” (2016), stainless steel, pH-neutral cement, basalt and aggregates to encourage coral growth, Museo Atlántico, Las Coloradas, Lanzarote, Atlantic Oceanl. Photo courtesy of the artist.
With love and light,
Maggie
PS Whenever you’re ready to start working with me, here are three ways:
1. Want to learn the basics of drawing and find your unique voice, without pressure or doubt? Sign up for my next 6-week online workshop, "Draw Like You Mean It." Lessons include weekly office hours and one-on-one guidance from me.
2. Already comfortable with drawing? The follow-up 6-week online workshop is "Take a Piece from Start to Finish." You'll get to develop a piece of your own to maturity.
3. Not sure where to begin? Schedule a free 30-minute consultation and I’ll ask you the single most important question to help you become the artist you’ve always wanted to be.
