Earning a full-time living from your creative work – CanvasRebel Magazine

We’ve seen way too many talented creatives quit because they couldn’t make it work financially. No doubt, the financial challenges of pursuing a creative or artistic career are daunting, but we felt there wasn’t enough discussion around how to make it work. So, we connected with artists and creatives who’ve been able to earn a full time living from their creative work and asked them to share their stories with our readers. 

Yevheniia Petrova

Long story short, I come from a hospitality background. My first degree is in restaurant and hotel business. For me, cooking has always been a form of art, and my journey started in my grandmother’s kitchen. Watching her cook everything from scratch taught me how to see magic in everyday routines. I started working early. Read More>>

Honey Bryant

I would not say it happened overnight, I have been able to earn from my creative work, but not yet at the level where it fully takes care of me and my family, and that is something I am still building toward Read More>>

Yes, but definitely not from day one. For me, earning a full time living from creative work was a gradual process, not a sudden breakthrough. I studied architecture in Venezuela and started my career there, but moving to the U.S. completely reset the game. I had experience, but I had to rebuild credibility, relationships, and understand a different market and way of doing business. Read More>>

Daryl Childs

The desire to become a full-time working artist was always a dream – graduating with a BFA and setting out into the wide world to begin my art career proved a much more daunting task. Read More>>

Jess Biancardi

I’ve been photographing weddings for five years, and for the past three years it has been my full-time career. But it definitely wasn’t like that from day one…the beginning of my journey was built on a lot of sacrifice, consistency, and long hours. When I decided I wanted to pursue wedding photography, I was working full-time as an associate producer. Read More>>

Heps Fury

From a child to teenager was already training fine art and graffiti culture, since day one I knew and practiced and experimented like an art scientist, high school in all art classes,art scholarship to miami dade, a professional break dancing entertainer for over 25 years while painting in the side, worked hard to master many mediums of art, Read More>>

Cassidy Minarik

How to earn a full-time living doing the creative work I love is something I’ve asked countless other artists – and every time the answer is different. I graduated from the Murray Center of Documentary Journalism at the University of Missouri in 2018. Read More>>

Brandon Smithwrick

I have been able to make a full-time living off of my creative work. Just to give you a bit of background on my journey, I studied fashion merchandising, quickly fell in love with marketing, and during that time social media was still relatively new for brands and businesses. Read More>>

Gracey Ripa

Before painting full time, I tattooed for seven years, which gave me a strong technical foundation and experience working with clients. When I made the transition, I saved enough to cover a full year of expenses in case things didn’t work out, but I was able to sustain myself through my art by the end of that first year without touching savings. Read More>>

Greg Hoy

There’s a passage in the powerful book ‘The Creative Act: A Way of Being’ by entrepreneur and artist Rick Rubin that encapsulates my thoughts on commerce and creativity. ‘Art is choosing to do something skillfully, caring about the details, bringing all of yourself to make the finest work you can.’ The biggest misconception about being an artist is that it’s a choice. Read More>>

Jay Chung

Not yet. Not fully. I’m not making a complete living just from my work at this point. But I’m also no longer relying on a single job the way I used to. It feels like I’m in the middle of building something that can eventually support itself. Before committing fully to painting, I worked as a civil engineer. Read More>>

Matthew Kurtyka

I have been a full time artist for the last 6 years, and it has definitely been an interesting journey! I graduated in college with less clarity that I had hoped for. I was pursuing a career in the entertainment industry, but soon came to realize that I worthy of being seen as a creative. I spent the next few years building my portfolio. Read More>>

Dan Abrusci

When I went to school for sound engineering, I thought my path would be music. But at that time, the music industry was in a really difficult place, and when I graduated, I had the opportunity to do an internship at a post-production studio. That completely changed the direction of my life. Read More>>