“Art shouldn’t be a career” but it is dude, the greatest, most important pieces of art in history were most often not made by amateurs, they were made by people who spent decades specializing themselves, developing their artistic language, you may be mad that they make money off of their art and that makes them “petit bourgeoisie” but within capitalism it is the only option we have to sustain ourselves while dedicating all that time to pushing those skills further and further, and it’s bizarre because you never see them use this rhetoric against any other discipline that requires decades of work, focus and specialization; maybe because they deem the other long term disciplines like medicine, engineering, architecture, etc, as “actually useful”, and it’s ironic because they end up right where they started using capitalist rhetoric to dismiss any human activities that are not immediately exploitable for material benefit.
So is it possible today to make art a profession? Not that art has ever guaranteed lavish earnings and fame (at least, not in life) to its protagonists. Yet today the illusion of having a network and a potentially reachable audience all over the world thanks to the Internet and digital technologies would lead us to believe that the process of monetizing art is much simpler.
But the most serious question one should ask is: what can I do decently and above all why should anyone invest their money in my work and not in a professional who has invested years and years of study and training in himself? What do I have that is innovative or intriguing that hasn't already been done millions of times and that could be of interest to a collector or art lover? If you have a credible answer then have your work evaluated by experts, try to get in touch with galleries and professionals in the sector, prepare a curriculum vitae that makes sense, prepare a catalog that you can show or a well-designed web page, participate in collective and personal exhibitions, create an "artistic experience" find a common thread for your theme, a linguistic code that distinguishes you without being excessively "outside" and above all study, try and study again, look around and find inspiration. Everything can be done, nothing is given without sacrifice, study and will.
THE PRODIGY OF IDEAS 