What Causes a “Starving Artist” Mindset?
At least when it comes to money and getting paid?
As I’ve been working on my book and marketing my latest coaching offers, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and reflecting around what causes this so-called “starving artist” mindset that seems to play an outsized role in keeping artists and related professionals financially challenged.
Part of it is we're in a society where too many don’t value the arts enough, at least not enough to want to pay for it themselves, and especially not for a respectable or even a livable wage. And another factor, which is controversial to acknowledge, is that unlike most other professions, many in the arts want validation more than compensation. In other words, they have a deeper desire to prove they're good enough more than they actually want to get paid enough. Many may also be trying to build their reputation in order to land related jobs and/or promote other products and services. Thus they may find the value in an opportunity itself to be worth more than any ideal payment amount. (And I’m speaking from experience here!😅)
We’ve also all heard some rendition of how any art is only good if it’s not created under the influence of money—never mind that it takes a certain amount of privilege to be able to afford to make any art for free or for substantially less than what’s deserved. Dare I suggest that if the art is not tainted by money, it’s tainted by the privilege of not needing the money! OR... Dare I also suggest one's art could be tainted by not being as good as it could be if the artist had a better quality of life. Why don’t the elites and the aficionados ever seem to want to talk about how much better the art might be if the artist never had to starve nor worry about starving?
wrote a very insightful article about art and suffering, the "obsession with the tortured genius," and the destructive mental health risks the romanticized mythologies pose.
Is Academia Responsible?
Since suffering is how life went for many of the greats like Van Gogh, Schubert, and so many others, many of us seem to have been conditioned to think we should suffer too. Did we study too hard in certain history classes? One takeaway from the book The Death of the Artist, by William Deresiewicz, is how much of the "starving artist" ideology as we know it today is arguably a construct of academia over the course of the 20th Century.
A life of poverty for the sake of one's art may have been common throughout history. But Deresiewicz helps make a case that the culture of academia and the nature of academic discourse over the last century may have helped further romanticize poverty or suffering as a sort of "right answer" for artistic career success. This may not have been intentional, and it may not necessarily refer to the actual intentions of anyone currently still alive and still teaching. But how else can we logically explain why so many highly educated and often highly-accomplished artists can almost to a default end up living a life without a sufficient amount of income? I’m open to other answers, because for too many, if they don’t happen to marry well, inherit well, or attain a day job that actually pays well, the quality of life is often not optimal.
There are also many mental health factors that deserve more consideration, but that’s beyond the scope of what I can write about. (Subscribe to
). But at least as it concerns to the business of being an artist, I’ve narrowed it down to eight major factors for which this "starving artist" ideology is often either employed or implied in order to justify not getting paid enough.
AND…It can be put into an acronym:
S. T. A. R. V. I. N. G. 😄
8 FACTORS BEHIND THE “S.T.A.R.V.I.N.G. ARTIST” MINDSET
This is not intended to be comprehensive, and I’m mainly focusing on the money and compensation aspects, but I’m definitely going to point out some of the biggest factors we’re dealing with when it comes to why we so often don’t get paid enough. And let me add the caveat that I'm a near-middle-age midwestern classical singer and former academic, and so my experiences come from that perspective.
1. S is for SUPERIORITY COMPLEXES
(AKA Artistic Purity or Academic Purity thinking). This includes everyone who thinks their art is too good for money, whether it's someone living a glorified life of poverty or suffering for the sake of their art, or someone who may delight in their privilege of not needing to care about money. This also includes some of the academics and academic types who might think their knowledge or teaching of said art is too good for money. In other words, they want a prestigious professional reputation more than a decent bank account balance!
And as I mentioned above, many deep down want validation more than compensation. Sometimes it’s validation they’re good enough, other times it’s just to validate having earned their expensive degrees, or it’s to build or keep current the resume or CV. Hence, so much of the artistic world can be a pay-to-play business. So if an opportunity can prove to the world we're good enough, we don't need to get paid enough, and thus we can claim we're too good for the money!
2. T is for TRADITIONS
(Especially the Patriarchal Ones!) There are far too many artistic jobs and gigs have been traditionally unpaid or volunteer work. Look no further than most houses of worship. Too many jobs have a “tradition” of paying less so that only wealthier people can afford to get hired—accepting lower pay is like a legal form tax evasion! Or there’s what you could call a tradition of sorts to use the “non-profit” status as an excuse to not pay enough. I’ve had multiple experiences when I asked about remuneration for a singing engagement, and the literal response was, “We don’t pay. We’re non-profit.”
But also in far too many professions dominated by women, the pay is often rooted in the idea that they should not need the money because they should have husbands who should be already earning enough to pay for the whole family. The wife's pay is just "discretionary income." It's literally still the 1950s for how far too many expect or want to pay people in the arts and many other lines of work!
3. A is for AFTER HOURS
This refers to anything that's associated with being a hobby or supposed to be done as an extra job outside your normal "day job" hours in the office or the factory, e.g. “moonlighting” or “side hustling.” Since you're supposed to already have enough income from the regular job—like it's still the 1950s!—the amount of additional pay doesn't have to matter. Like with a wife's salary, some might call it “discretionary income.” “You’re supposed to have another job anyway…” was an argument I once heard during an opera chorus union contract negotiation. I’ve also encountered this attitude when asking churches and others for a more respectable wage for my singing. Sadly, this isn't just something for artists to deal with; servers, cooks, Uber/Lyft drivers, bar tenders, and far too many other essential workers still get this treatment today.
4. R is for REALLY BAD with Money or Management
On an individual level, many are susceptible to letting the "starving artist" mindset make them feel defeated or excused from being financially responsible or from having any confidence in their self-advocacy and negotiating capabilities. I've had my share of such moments. It also doesn't help if you're not being paid anywhere close to enough to afford to even think about being responsible.
Most of the financial literacy rhetoric fails to acknowledge that compensation also needs to actually be enough. You can’t just be financially literate and expect to survive on a $300 honorarium for a gig requiring months of study and rehearsing. You can’t pinch your pennies to your way out of poverty. This is why I'm on a mission to help people learn to actually earn more and learn the most universally acquirable skills to do so!
On the organizational side, many artistic organizations are poorly managed and run by people for whom being just another starving artist can seem to be an implicit excuse for managerial incompetence. A lot of people try to start a new organization with the best of intentions, but they get easily overwhelmed or get really careless with running things. They're often really bad with fundraising, really bad with marketing, and really bad with paying people because “you’re supposed to just be a starving artist” anyway!
5. V is for VILLAINS or VERY BAD PEOPLE
It's no secret there are some very bad, abusive people in the artistic industries. Financial abuses and wage theft are real and often unreported problems, but they are often difficult to prove, especially when the engagements pay you as a contractor and not as an employee.
Some seem to love exploiting the false promise that you just have to be a good little starving artist and "pay your dues" by tolerating the lack of pay and abusive behavior as you "work your way up.” Many have been conditioned to believe a utopian life of prosperity and abundance in one’s art form will be the result. But the truth is it’s mostly just coercive control. None of these kinds of people will likely want to feed you if you literally start to starve—they’d rather discard you for being “difficult to work with.”
One major lesson I’ve learned in my performing career is that there is no guarantee of reciprocity for free and underpaid work. Choose your engagements carefully; also choose your close friends, mentors, and confidants wisely.
Another "very bad actor” of sorts that doesn't get talked about enough are people who will weaponize religion, politics, or other forms of artistic or academic ideologies to get away with not paying enough. Be prepared for instances where some sort of political correctness, or an intentional lack thereof, is utilized to excuse organizational ineptness or to justify abusive or bad behavior. And this is a BOTH/ALL “sides” problem. There’s a lot of rhetoric these days about inclusivity and accessibility, but can anything be truly inclusive and accessible if everyone isn’t getting paid enough to actually to live a healthy, happy life?
No matter our personal or political beliefs, we need to be mindful of what we say and don’t say, and we must strive to be as kind and respectful as we can, even if it’s a perspective we may severely disagree with. Most importantly, we need to keep striving to seek the truth above all else. Truth is like the center of town, and we’re all doing our best to get there from the respective place we started.
6. I is for IGNORANCE
This one is my favorite because it has the most positive economic upside for the least amount of effort. It's easy to forget that there are indeed a lot of people who just don't know what is appropriate to pay. More often than we might think, they will be willing to pay more if you approach the conversation correctly. Too often we assume they do know and so we blindly accept whatever we can get out of fear someone else will get the work.
One silver lining of sorts from the past 20+ years of declining or sporadic arts funding in schools is that we now have multiple generations who really just don't know. More people than we might think will be open to paying more if it's the right offer—especially if it's for their children, or especially if their employer is footing the bill and getting a tax deduction anyway!
7. N is for NURTURERS
This is a problem in many professions, especially in the helping professions. Many of us educators in the arts have a strong tendency to develop codependent traits like it's a vocational mission to feed all the starving artists. Check out my post about how I learned about why I undercharged. We often undercharge and undervalue ourselves as teachers and mentors because we live in fear and worry about what others can afford, or we think we're doing our art form or profession a favor by accepting the gigs for no pay or not enough pay. Codependency is a significant career and business risk that doesn’t get talked about enough.
8. G is for the rest of the GUNK in your head!
This is partly a catch-all for anything I may have missed, but G.U.N.K is also an acronym for much of what else contributes to this “starving artist” rationalization for not getting paid enough:
Generational Beliefs: Whether we want to admit it or not, we have beliefs, values and ideas deeply ingrained in our subconsciousness, many of which our parents and grandparents passed down to us, even from our great grandparents and beyond. Hence why it can feel like we're literally stuck in the 1950s with some of these issues!
Unhealed Core Wounds: A lot of us have core wounds from our childhood that affect us as adults. Many of us went into the arts in an effort to heal our traumas or otherwise fill an unmet need in our lives. And it's a major factor in why we can be susceptible to the worst aspects of the starving artist ideologies.
Negative Self-talk and Negative Thinking: The inner critic often is alive and well in our heads! Also, negative thinking in general is not just bad, too much of it can literally cause brain damage! Price Pritchett in this interview said less negative thinking is actually more important than more positive thinking! It's hard to avoid negativity though, especially on social media, and so we need to be intentional in how and what information we consume online and how we relate with others. Strive to find the good in all things.
Knowledge that doesn't serve you: Thinking we know everything often keeps us from making the serious changes we need to make. The fear of failing or being seen as "wrong" or making a mistake causes us to want to just double down on what we already know at the expense of the better life we could have. The truth is, every rich and successful person experiences serious failures and shortcomings which turn into invaluable lessons along the journey. So, here's what might be a very empowering question when you’re dealing with these conflicts: "Would you rather be more right, or would you rather be more rich?"
Ready to Starve the Starving Artist Mindset Once and for All and Unleash Your Next Level?
The truth is we have to be willing get out of the rat race and make different choices as far as how we present ourselves and what we have to offer, including to whom and for how much. We also we have to develop rock-solid confidence in the value of what we offer. And we need strong boundaries to mitigate one of the biggest business and career risks: the subconscious desire to please and appease everyone. And so this is why personal development and continuously working on your mindset and interpersonal skillset is an essential ingredient to long-term success.
There is no overnight magic blue pill to eliminating all the “gunk” in our heads and developing an empowered mindset to withstand these ongoing money and business challenges we face. The value systems and beliefs that have informed our thinking around money and business since childhood, not to mention we learned in college, run deep in our subconsciousness. They don't go away without extended studying and deliberate practice. It's not much different from improving your health or getting better at singing or any other skill and undoing the bad habits along the way.
This is why I offer custom private business and mindset coaching as well as my signature Grow Your Money Voice group training. I offer my clients an immersive process to start mastering empowering money and business perspectives. It’s all about mastering your ability to package and sell what you offer and quashing the negative beliefs and disempowering ideas that are not serving you. All my clients will also get to join an exclusive community of like-minded entrepreneurs and artists who will want to help hold you accountable and root for your success.
This cost of the working with me in this capacity is comparable to many graduate school courses or programs. If you’re serious about investing in your growth, I’ll be serious about helping you find a way to make it happen. Send me a message and we’ll determine what’s best for you!
With gratitude,
Brian
These are well thought out, Brian, and I really appreciate your voice of reason in our industry!
Thanks for sharing my ramblings, Brian.