Making Time for Art

I Wanted to Be an Artist, So I Quit My Job and Became One  
By Christopher Fife, Guest Writer 

"Hi, I'm Christopher. I'm an artist." Exhale, run my fingers through my hair. "What do I do? Oh, I paint. I'm a painter. Yeah, I'm an artist."

I tried it out every now and then, in front of the bathroom mirror. It sounded all right. But when I introduced myself as an artist outside my bathroom world of make-believe, I always felt false. I was like Magritte labeling a pipe. If I said I was an artist, I was an artist, right? 

Not exactly. Since I dedicated forty-plus hours a week to my corporate graphic design job, I was lucky if I painted a couple of hours a week. I came to despise myself for this self-deceit, for my inability to embrace what I really wanted to be. I wanted to be an artist. So I committed myself to becoming one.

I started out like most people do, shifting my schedule around and finding time to do my work. I sketched on the subway during my hour-long commute from Brooklyn to midtown Manhattan. (When I didn't get a seat, my sketches became really creative.) I started waking up half an hour earlier to pay my bills and do my laundry and get all my other daily chores out of the way so that I could paint at night. I multi-tasked until I looked like a one-man band, juggling six things at once. And it worked for a while. I could dedicate three or four hours to painting every night, plus more time on the weekends. I was getting stuff done. I was an artist.

But I was also getting worn out. With my new schedule, I was only getting five or six hours of sleep a night. I became lethargic and stopped giving one hundred percent at my job. My social life was nearly non-existent; I didn't have time for friends anymore. I was lonely. But artists are supposed to suffer, right?

There was one other problem as well. My work really wasn't very good. Sure, I was dedicating twenty or thirty hours a week, but those hours were after a full day at the office-hours when I should have been winding down or sleeping, not digging into inner creative sources. And everything else-shopping, cleaning, cooking, talking on the phone-was crammed into the few hours available in the morning. Basically, I was doing everything I wanted to. But I was doing it all rather poorly.

After pondering if I was meant to be an artist, I started reassessing my priorities. I was dedicating more than forty hours a week to my design job, a job that, ironically, I'd originally taken as a great way to pursue my artistic goals. I thought I'd make a lot of connections and get my foot in the industry door, but about all I was getting out of it was a bi-weekly paycheck. There were so many department heads and legal experts assessing my every project that I had no room for creativity at work, and no energy for creativity at home.

I began to scorn my job, and to dream of freedom. I dreamt of quitting, leaving the insufferable environment of that midtown skyscraper to live as a starving artist, painting ten, twenty, thirty hours a day. That dream soon consumed me and overpowered me until it drove me to do the seemingly impossible. One glorious day, I brazenly walked into my boss's office and gave notice. I simply did it.

Though the image of quitting my job on a whim in order to pursue my art might be a romantic one, it isn't exactly the reality of the situation. I gave a lot of consideration to the feasibility of such a move. I had a few thousand dollars saved up; I knew I'd be all right financially for a while. But not in infamously expensive New York. Since my apartment lease was about to expire, and I had no family, or really any solid link outside of simple cosmopolitan desire, binding me to expensive New York, I pushed my courage one step further and relocated to Philadelphia. For less than my New York City one-bedroom rent, I found an apartment big enough for real studio space.

Liberated and exhilarated, without dental care or a 401K plan, I set myself up as an artist in Philadelphia. It was a fantasy come true. I woke up every day to the sight of my paintings-in-progress. I spent my time painting, touring galleries and museums, and getting to know my new metropolis. I made new friends in this small city and e-mailed my old pals in New York, who congratulated me and envied me. I was living my dream.

But of course, the dream could not go on forever. My money was not rejuvenating itself and, after a couple of months, I had to accept that the time had come for me to downgrade my title to part-time artist. I'd have to start making some money again.

I was perspicacious in my job search: I would not take anything that hindered my dream. I decided that the right job for me would be a job that offered any of the following: lots of free time, great connections in the field, access to art and artists, or a 50% discount at an art supply store. The right job would also have to be something that I enjoyed doing and through which I would feel challenged and fulfilled.

After a few weeks scouring the market, I took a job at an art museum. Granted, it's only in the admissions department, but I do get to see bona fide and celebrated artworks every day.

And so my dream goes on. I work twenty to thirty hours a week for pay and thirty to forty hours a week for sheer pleasure. Of course I live meagerly, cutting coupons and foregoing luxuries like restaurants and movies. But I am living in a way that suits me, and which allows me to be an artist. As a result of my catalytic move, my painting is doing much better. I'm doing much better. I feel like I'm living life on my own terms now. I'm no longer simply calling myself an artist; I actually am one.

This article was originally created for TheArtBiz.com. It appears on NYFA Interactive courtesy of the Abigail Rebecca Cohen Library.