Why Do So Many Professional Artists Have More Than One Job?

There is a familiar story about becoming an artist.

At first, you have another job.

Then the practice grows.

Eventually, the other job disappears and you become a full-time artist.

For some people, something like that happens.

But it is not a reliable description of professional artistic life.

Many professional artists continue to teach, freelance, assist, fabricate, work in cultural organisations, or hold jobs outside the arts.

Sometimes that work pays the rent.

Sometimes it pays for the studio.

Sometimes it provides a predictable income when artistic income moves from month to month.

And sometimes it takes exactly the hours and energy the practice needs.

So the useful question is not:

Should a professional artist have another job?

It is:

What does the other job make possible, what does it cost in time and energy, and does the week still leave enough room for the practice?

The short answer is:

Having another job does not make an artistic practice less professional. But the structure still has consequences. Another job can support the practice and compete with it at the same time.

1. A professional artist can still have another job

The idea that professional status begins when every other job ends is attractive because it gives an uncertain career a clear threshold.

Before the threshold, you are still trying.

After it, you have arrived.

The evidence does not support that as a general rule.

Studies of professional artists repeatedly include people whose working lives contain more than the artistic practice itself.

That matters because it changes the meaning of the question.

Another job is not automatically evidence that the practice is amateur.

It is part of the economic and practical structure around many professional practices.

Article 12 in this Knowledge library looks directly at what makes someone a professional artist.

The important point here is narrower:

A second job does not cancel professional status.

The harder question is whether the combination of work still leaves enough capacity for the practice to continue.

2. A split working week is common

Different countries measure artists' working lives in different ways, so their figures should not be turned into one global percentage.

But the pattern appears across several independent studies.

Creative Australia's study of practising professional artists across multiple artforms found that only 9 percent spent all their working time on creative work alone in 2021 to 2022. ^↗

The average working week was about 44 hours.

About 21 of those hours were spent on creative work.

About 13 were spent on arts-related work.

About 10 were spent on non-arts work.

That is not a visual-artist-only sample.

It also does not mean every artist had three separate jobs.

Some were self-employed across several kinds of work.

Some taught.

Some moved between contracts.

Some had employment outside the arts.

The useful point is that the professional week was often already divided.

A 2025 German survey of visual artists found a similar structural reality using different categories.

More than half of the self-selected respondents were active both artistically and outside artistic activity. ^↗

In that study, artistic teaching is counted inside artistic activity, so the boundary is not the same as in Australia.

Aotearoa New Zealand gives another perspective.

In a 2022 survey across several creative fields, 44 percent also did paid work outside the creative sector. ^↗

Among people described as becoming established, the figure was 55 percent.

That does not mean outside work causes development.

It means the idea that only beginners have other jobs does not fit that sample.

A UK survey of DACS members also found a large minority doing non-creative work alongside their visual-art practice. ^↗

Again, this is a collecting-society member sample, not every visual artist in the country.

These studies do not give us one global day-job rate.

They do give us a consistent warning against the fantasy that professional artistic work normally occupies the entire working week.

3. "Another job" can mean very different things

A second job can sound like one category.

It is not.

For one artist it may be school teaching.

For another it may be freelance fabrication.

For another it may be arts administration.

For another it may be three days a week in a completely unrelated job.

For another it may be a sequence of short contracts rather than one employer.

This distinction matters because the relationship to the practice can be very different.

Teaching can use the artist's knowledge directly.

Fabrication or assisting can use technical skills developed in the studio.

Arts administration and non-arts employment relate to the practice in different ways.

None of those structures is automatically better.

And the studies do not even place them in the same categories.

Australia mainly treats teaching as arts-related work rather than the artist's creative practice.

The German study includes artistic teaching inside artistic activity.

So even the sentence "this artist earns from art" may mean different things depending on who is measuring it.

Article 17 owns that wider income map.

For this article, the important point is simpler:

The other work can be close to the practice, far from it, stable, unstable, chosen, necessary, or several of those things at once.

4. Why does the other job exist?

The most obvious answer is money.

But that answer needs unpacking.

Artistic income can be irregular.

The practice itself can also cost money.

There may be rent, materials, fabrication, equipment, transport, documentation or other expenses before the work generates anything.

Creative Australia's research estimated average practice expenses of about AUD 17,000 alongside average creative income of about AUD 23,200.

Those are all-artform averages, and the study warns that allocating practice costs precisely is difficult.

They are not a model budget.

They do show why a second income can exist even when the artistic practice is already producing money.

The German visual-artist survey found that 79 percent of respondents named financial insecurity as a central challenge.

More than half named several pressures at once.

That matters because a second job is rarely only an abstract career choice.

It can be part of a larger attempt to keep several things functioning at the same time:

housing,

the studio,

materials,

care,

food,

transport,

and the time needed to keep making work.

Sometimes the other job is what allows the studio to exist at all.

5. Mariam Megalla shows the trade-off clearly

Brooklyn painter Mariam Megalla described taking on additional freelance work to help pay for a new studio.

The financial reason is easy to understand.

The studio created a cost.

The freelance work helped cover it.

But the change also altered the week.

Megalla said her studio time moved from roughly four or five days a week to two or three. ^↗

That is one artist's account.

It is not proof that every additional job reduces studio time by the same amount.

Its value is that both sides of the decision are visible at once.

The job supports the studio.

The job also takes time away from it.

Neither sentence cancels the other.

This is why the question "Is the job good or bad for the practice?" can be too simple.

A job can make the practice financially possible while making it harder to practise.

6. The week is often the real constraint

Income questions easily become money-only questions.

But a professional practice also needs time.

The Aotearoa New Zealand research makes that visible.

People who also worked outside the creative sector spent about 24 hours a week on creative work within an average 40-hour working week.

Those who worked only inside the creative sector averaged about 45 hours of creative work.

That does not prove the outside job was a mistake.

It shows that paid work outside the practice and time for the practice are competing claims on the same week.

Artist Frances Bukovsky described the same tension at the scale of one life.

Bukovsky wrote openly about earning around $26,000 before tax in the previous year, with the larger share coming from a day job. ^↗

When they reduced their day-job hours, their income for that month fell by about a quarter.

More time became available.

Less money came in.

Artistic income did not immediately replace the difference.

That is not a failure story.

It is not a success formula either.

It is what a real trade-off can look like before the outcome is known.

7. A steadier job can still make the practice less predictable

Another common assumption is that the artistic practice is unstable and the second job is stable.

Sometimes that is true.

Not always.

New York visual artist Benjamin Kress describes freelance fabrication work that is close to his artistic skills but arrives unevenly. ^↗

Some weeks leave room for ordinary studio work.

Other periods become long, intense stretches of paid fabrication.

That is arts-related work, but it does not function like a predictable salary.

The distinction matters.

An artist can have multiple income sources and still experience volatility.

More jobs do not automatically produce more security.

They can produce more invoices, more deadlines, more context switching and more uncertainty.

A mixed working life should therefore not be romanticised as a clever portfolio career by default.

Sometimes it is flexible.

Sometimes it is exhausting.

Sometimes it is both.

8. Teaching is not evidence that the art career failed

Teaching deserves special attention because it is both common and easy to misread.

In the Australian research, teaching is the main form of arts-related work among artists who do arts-related work.

In the German survey, artistic teaching sits inside artistic activity, and about a quarter of respondents said teaching made up a high or very high share of their artistic income.

Those studies classify teaching differently.

Neither treats it as proof that the person stopped being an artist.

Painter Molly Zuckerman-Hartung offers a useful individual example.

She has taught while maintaining her own practice for years.

She has also said she would not want a life based only on painting sales even if the market made that possible. ^↗

That is her position.

It is not a recommendation that artists should become professors.

A university position is not available to everyone, and her exhibition history does not prove that teaching caused later recognition.

The value of the example is narrower.

For some professional artists, teaching is not the job they are waiting to escape.

It is part of the structure they have chosen to keep.

9. A teaching year can also fragment studio time

A job can be meaningful and still take time.

Artist and educator Bethanie Irons describes studio work during the teaching year as something that often happens in shorter stretches rather than uninterrupted days. ^↗

That is another useful correction to an all-or-nothing picture.

A working week does not have to contain five clear studio days to contain a serious practice.

At the same time, the loss of uninterrupted time can matter greatly depending on the work.

Different practices also need different kinds of working time.

So even when two artists both say "I teach," the effect on the practice may not be the same.

The relevant unit is not only the job title.

It is the actual week.

10. Care and household structure change the same equation

Paid employment is not the only thing competing for time.

Care work and household responsibilities can stack on top of both the job and the practice.

The German survey found that women named care, multiple pressures and financial insecurity more often than men.

It also describes care interruptions as something that can make residencies harder to use and can reduce visibility for long periods.

Creative Australia's research found that around half of artists considered a partner's income important in supporting the practice.

That is primarily an economic finding.

But household structure is also a time structure.

Who earns?

Who has predictable hours?

Who covers care?

Who can travel?

Who can accept a residency?

Who can work evenings?

The answers can determine how much artistic time a person actually has.

That does not make household support a measure of talent or seriousness.

It means comparisons between artists become misleading when the rest of the week disappears from view.

11. Does the second job disappear later in the career?

Sometimes.

Not as a rule.

The 2025 German survey found that exclusive artistic activity was more common among older respondents than younger ones.

That suggests the balance can change.

But artistic activity in that study includes teaching, and mixed activity remains part of the picture.

The Aotearoa New Zealand sample pushes against a simple ladder even more directly.

People described as becoming established were more likely than average to do paid work outside the creative sector.

The studies therefore do not support a universal career sequence in which outside work steadily declines until it disappears.

A later career can contain:

more teaching,

more commissions,

more administrative roles,

more project work,

less outside employment,

or the same outside employment by choice.

A person's mix can change without converging on one ideal form.

12. Keeping another job can be deliberate

It is important not to reduce every second job to economic failure.

Some artists describe the other work as part of a structure they want to keep.

Others describe it as time they would reduce if the economics allowed it.

The evidence in this dossier contains both experiences.

The evidence in this article cannot tell an individual artist which one they should choose.

It can remove one misleading standard:

A professional artistic career does not have to end in one job called artist.

13. Should you quit the other job?

That is not a question this article can responsibly answer.

The evidence does not identify a universal point at which reducing employment becomes the correct next move.

Nor does it show that holding on to a job is always safer.

Instead, it gives a more useful set of questions.

What does the job currently pay for?

Rent?

Household costs?

The studio?

Materials?

Periods between commissions?

What does it cost the practice?

Hours?

Concentration?

Travel flexibility?

Energy?

Long uninterrupted working time?

What happens if the hours change?

Does the practice already generate enough money to replace them?

Or does the financial pressure simply move somewhere else?

Is the job itself stable?

Or is it another freelance stream with its own uncertainty?

These are not instructions to quit or stay.

They are a way to see the trade more clearly.

14. Opportunities also take time from a split week

Open calls, residencies, grants and commissions can offer money, time, production support, visibility or a new context for the work.

They can also require significant application labour.

For an artist already dividing the week between a practice, paid work and possibly care, that matters.

An application that is poorly funded, weakly matched or unlikely to be eligible is not only a possible financial cost.

It is also a use of scarce working time.

This is one reason more opportunities are not automatically better.

The useful question is not how many applications can fit into the week.

It is which opportunities are relevant enough to justify the time they require.

So why do so many professional artists have more than one job?

Because professional artistic life often has to hold several things at once.

The work needs time.

The practice has costs.

Artistic income can be irregular.

The household has ordinary expenses.

Care and other responsibilities still exist.

Teaching or other work may be meaningful in its own right.

A second job can therefore make the practice possible.

It can also make the practice harder to maintain.

Those two statements are not contradictory.

Having another job is not evidence that the artistic practice has failed.

But neither is every combination of jobs, care and studio time automatically workable.

The useful question is not whether a professional artist should have another job.

It is:

Does this structure leave enough money, time and energy for the practice you are actually trying to sustain?

That question does not produce one correct schedule.

It makes the real schedule visible.

Editorial note

The studies referenced in this guide use different definitions of creative work, arts-related work, artistic activity and non-arts employment. Their percentages should not be combined into one global rate of professional artists with second jobs.

The Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand studies cover several creative or artistic fields rather than visual artists alone. The German study is a self-selected survey of visual artists. The UK DACS research is a member sample.

Teaching is classified differently between studies. In the Australian framework it is mainly arts-related work. In the German framework artistic teaching sits inside artistic activity.

The artist cases in this article illustrate working structures and trade-offs. They do not show that teaching, reducing job hours, taking freelance work or leaving a job causes artistic recognition or career success.

No job structure described here should be treated as a recommended schedule.