What Is Your Biggest Struggle as an Artist?

Ask artists this question and the answers rarely sound the same.

Some will talk about money. Others will mention visibility, finding collectors, staying motivated, managing social media, understanding the business side of their practice, or finding enough time to make the work they actually want to make.

But beneath these different answers, there is often a common problem: artists are expected to build an entire career around their practice, often without being taught how to do it.

The difficulty is not always making the art. For many artists, the harder question is what happens after the work is made.

How do you find the right audience? How do you earn consistently? How do you price your work? How do you build a professional practice without allowing the business side to take over the creative one?

These questions are rarely discussed as openly as they should be.

The Biggest Struggle Is Often Not One Thing

A 2023 article by artist and creative business educator Stacie Bloomfield identifies several recurring challenges for artists building sustainable businesses. These include gaining visibility online, getting stuck in preparation, dealing with inconsistent income, and assuming that making more art will automatically lead to a stronger business. (Stacie Bloomfield)

These challenges may appear separate, but they are closely connected.

An artist may create strong work but struggle to communicate it. They may have an audience but no clear way to convert visibility into income. They may receive opportunities but lack the confidence or knowledge to negotiate them. They may spend so much time trying to remain visible that they have little energy left for the practice itself.

This is why asking an artist, “What is your biggest struggle?” can be more useful than asking whether they are successful.

The answer often reveals where the support system is failing.

Making Art and Building a Career Are Two Different Skills

One of the most persistent assumptions about artists is that if the work is strong enough, everything else will follow.

It is a comforting idea. It is also rarely true.

A strong artistic practice does not automatically create a sustainable career. Artists may need to understand pricing, contracts, marketing, applications, portfolio development, communication, sales, collectors, and professional relationships.

These are different skills from painting, sculpting, photographing, or making installations.

Yet artists are often expected to develop all of them independently.

This creates an unusual professional situation. An artist may be simultaneously the creative director, producer, marketing manager, salesperson, administrator, business owner, and accountant of their own practice.

The problem is not that artists should never learn these things. The problem is that many are expected to learn them through trial and error, often at a cost.

The Pressure to Be Visible Never Really Stops

Digital platforms have made it easier for artists to share their work with audiences around the world. But they have also created a new form of pressure.

Artists are expected to post regularly, create content, tell stories, respond to audiences, build a personal brand, and remain visible within an increasingly crowded online environment.

As Bloomfield points out, artists can easily feel invisible online, even when they have strong work and a clear style. The sheer volume of content makes it difficult to reach the people who may genuinely connect with or buy the work. (Stacie Bloomfield)

This creates a difficult contradiction.

Artists need visibility, but constant self-promotion can become exhausting. They need to communicate their work, but they do not necessarily want their entire practice to become a marketing exercise.

The challenge, therefore, is not simply to be seen by more people. It is to be seen by the right people, in the right context.

The Financial Reality Is Often More Difficult Than People Imagine

The idea of making a living from art is frequently romanticised.

In reality, income can be unpredictable. One month may bring multiple sales or opportunities. The next may bring nothing.

This feast-and-famine cycle is one of the challenges highlighted in research and writing on the business realities of an artistic career. Artists may earn money through exhibitions, commissions, teaching, grants, licensing, workshops, or sales, but these income streams are often irregular. (Stacie Bloomfield)

The result is a career that can be difficult to plan around.

An artist may be making important work and still worry about rent, materials, studio costs, production, shipping, or the next opportunity.

This is where the language of “passion” can become problematic.

Passion may help an artist continue, but it does not pay for materials. Passion cannot replace fair payment, professional knowledge, or sustainable systems.

Artists need to be able to care deeply about their work without being expected to sacrifice financial stability for it.

Sometimes the Struggle Is Knowing What to Focus On

Artists are often told to do more.

• Make more work.

• Post more frequently.

• Apply to more opportunities.

• Attend more events.

• Build a larger audience.

• Create new income streams.

The problem is that doing more does not always lead to better results.

In fact, trying to do everything at once can make it harder to build anything properly. Bloomfield argues that artists often benefit from focusing on one income stream or direction at a time rather than spreading their energy across too many possibilities. (Stacie Bloomfield)

This is a point worth considering.

A sustainable career is not necessarily built through constant activity. It is built through clarity.

An artist needs to understand what they are trying to build, which opportunities support that direction, and where their energy is best spent.

South Asian Artists Are Navigating These Challenges Within an Uneven Ecosystem

For artists working across South Asia, these challenges often exist alongside wider structural gaps.

The region has a rich and increasingly visible contemporary art scene, but access to galleries, collectors, professional networks, funding, mentorship, and institutional opportunities remains uneven.

An artist may be producing ambitious work but have limited access to the networks that can help that work travel.

This is particularly important for emerging and mid-career artists who may not yet have established representation or institutional support.

The growth of independent art collectives and creative communities across India shows that artists are actively building alternative networks of support, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing. Recent reporting has highlighted how these collectives are creating new spaces for dialogue and access, especially for communities that have historically been underrepresented in cultural institutions. (The Economic Times)

But individual artists should not have to build every support system from scratch.

What We Hear from Artists at Artlune

At Artlune, conversations with artists often reveal that their biggest struggle is not a lack of ambition.

It is uncertainty.

They may be unsure how to position their practice, which opportunities to pursue, how to approach galleries, how to speak about their work, or how to turn a period of visibility into something more sustainable.

Sometimes, the problem is not that an artist lacks direction. It is that they have too many possible directions and no one to help them evaluate them.

This is why we believe artist development needs to include more than the artwork itself.

Artists need space to think about their practice, but they also need access to conversations about communication, professional development, opportunities, collectors, and long-term career planning.

Supporting artists means supporting the conditions that allow them to continue making work.

So, What Is the Biggest Struggle?

Perhaps the answer is different for every artist.

For one person, it may be money. For another, visibility. For someone else, it may be the uncertainty of not knowing what to do next.

But many of these struggles lead back to the same question:

How do you build a sustainable career around a practice that is deeply personal, unpredictable, and difficult to fit into conventional professional structures?

There is no single answer.

But artists should not be expected to figure everything out alone.

A stronger art ecosystem requires more than exhibitions and sales. It requires knowledge-sharing, professional support, community, access, and conversations that recognise the full reality of an artistic career.

At Artlune, we believe the future of South Asian contemporary art depends not only on discovering talented artists, but on creating the conditions that help them keep developing.

Because the question is not simply whether artists can overcome their struggles. They have been doing that for generations.

The more important question is: what would change if artists had better support before they reached the point of crisis?

References

• Stacie Bloomfield, “5 Challenges Artists Face When Building an Art Business.” (Stacie Bloomfield)

• Stacie Bloomfield, “5 Things Every Artist Must Do to Build a Successful Business.” (Stacie Bloomfield)

• Stacie Bloomfield, “How to Start an Art Business.” (Stacie Bloomfield)

• Red Dot Blog, “The Challenges of Making a Living as an Artist.”

• Economic Times, “The Rise of India’s Art Collectives and How They Are Reshaping Identity, Access, and Creative Practice.” (The Economic Times)