A curiosity: I started this post on 22 November 2018 and finished it on 20 October 2026, almost eight years later.
In this post, I want to look at the psychology and motive behind making different kinds of art (as the title suggests), but I'll also touch on the gradients in between.
Some context for my opinion: I have worked well over a dozen years in various iterations of the creative industry, from tattoos to videos, with a ton of illustration and graphics in between.
As a child I drew for fun. My first feeling of "competing" was in primary school: for the first time, someone was better than me. I kind of kept going like that, improving only to best the next better artist... and to cut a long story short, the internet, and specifically Facebook, exploded! I could no longer outdo my fellow artists. There are too many of them, and they are really, really good.
Okay, let's refocus our lens here a bit. Looking back on the journey now is easy, but while I was on it, I had no hindsight. These days I sort of think of myself as an art researcher: I make things to find out what happens when I make them.
The ending, eight years later
Art for fun has one client: you. Nobody signs it off, nobody pays for it, and nobody can tell you it's wrong. Art for money has someone else as the client. There's a brief, a deadline, and a person whose opinion suddenly matters more than yours.
Neither one is purer than the other. I've sold paintings through galleries, spent nearly 14 years in an agency working my way from designer to creative director, and now I freelance. I've made good work for money and forgettable work for fun, and the other way around.
The gradients in between are where it gets interesting: a commission where the client trusts you, a personal piece that happens to sell, a quick job that teaches you a new trick. Most of my working life has lived somewhere along that line.
And the competing? It stopped mattering. There will always be someone better on the internet. Alan Watts pointed out that the point of dancing isn't to arrive at a particular spot on the floor. Fun or money, the point of making art is the making.