The 40% Rule: Why Being an Artist is Rarely About Making Art

I’ve mentioned before that running an art business is a bit of a juggling act, but lately, it feels less like juggling and more like running the entire circus.

When you decide to go pro, you know you’ll have to handle your own business. But the reality is a lot messier than the "creative life" aesthetic people see on Instagram. On any given day, I’m rotating through a dozen different roles:

• The Secretary: Handling emails and scheduling.

• The Billing Department: Chasing invoices and balancing books.

• The Shipping Clerk: Wrestling with bubble wrap and cardboard.

• The Marketing Team: Trying to make the algorithm happy.

• The Janitor: Scraping dried paint off the floor (again).

The Reality of the "Creative" Clock

Here’s the part that still catches me off guard: even though I’m in the studio for hours every single day, I’d estimate that only about 30% to 40% of my time is actually spent making art. That is a wild statistic to wrap my head around. You spend your life honing a craft, only to realize that once you turn it into a career, the "craft" becomes the minority of your workload. It’s a constant, weird cycle of creating the work and then immediately shifting gears to figure out where on earth to sell it.

The Invisible Workload

The part I truly didn’t anticipate—is the paperwork. The amount of mental energy that goes into finding, researching, and applying for juried fairs or grants is staggering. It’s not just "filling out a form." It’s writing artist statements, formatting high-res images to very specific specs, and crafting narratives that justify your existence to a committee. It’s a desk job that just happens to happen in a studio.

It’s a lot to juggle, and some days the balls definitely drop. But as much as I vent about the "admin" side of things, it’s all part of the engine that keeps the studio lights on.