Long-Term Prospects

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Job Satisfaction

General quality of life statement

If you give a kid a paintbrush, he's going to ask for paint. When you give him paint, he'll probably ask for canvas. If you don't see where we're going with this, we'll tell you: Being an artist requires buying a lot of materials. Expensive materials. Probably the toughest part about making a career out of selling your own personal, original artwork is that you'll need to keep buying supplies so you can work…but you also gotta eat.

Thinking about hanging up your work in a gallery? Sounds great, but galleries take a huge chunk of your profit. So if you sell a painting for $700, the gallery might take 50% commission, and if it took you a month to make that painting, you only get paid $350 for that month. You can earn more money flippin' burgers for minimum wage, which is what a lot of artists do. Get used to living a double life.

Okay, so there's not a lot of money in being an artist, and it's a very risky career path. In fact, you could make anywhere from $0 to $1,000,000 per year. Luckily, there are many fields and businesses that need creative people with technical art skills. A good, stable salary is definitely attainable as a fine arts major. Many fine arts majors get jobs as graphic designers or art directors. In fact, Thomas Kinkade worked as an artist in the film industry before he blessed society with his trademark use of light and biblically inspired artwork.

It's a tough world we live in. We're part of a system that favors mass production and consumption, and you need to participate in order to survive. Selling art that exists solely for art's sake is unfortunately not a profitable business practice, generally speaking. However, if you get a degree in fine arts, statistics say you'll be just fine.

25th Percentile Salary

Median Salary

75th Percentile Salary

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