martyn coutts

Ok, this is a rant, i admit it.

Today a colleague (and friend) of mine were in the studio together and (she is also an artist) we admitted to each other that we were both flat broke. Between the two of us we have won awards (I just last month won a Green Room award), toured the world, made beautiful moments that hundreds of people have witnessed, but we both had minus in our accounts.

Had we chosen wrong?

Recently my parents said to me that I had chosen what it is I do and that i could have been anything.

Perhaps we should have been something else, something easier, something more profitable.

I can feel this rant slipping into a discussion about the value of culture, but this is an argument I will never win, especially in this country.

Earlier in my life, I think I had the ability to cope with the lack of money, but i think now, whilst getting smashed with several projects at the same time, the worst thing in the world is to be out of pocket.

Marcus Westbury writes a couple of things about the mysteries of how to be an artist and be able to eat – one is here.

After reading that article I thought to myself – I am entrepreneurial, I have a diverse skill base, I am engaged, I have an online presence (and following) and I am also relatively successful. But even with all that, i am still not solvent…

I have often wondered about the amount of artists who get to their mid-thirties and then drift off into other industries there can’t be any data for this surely? I haven’t seen any reports on it.

In any case, in the scheme of things, it is really nothing – people are dying in the Sudan etc. what am I whining about?

Go and get a real job.

SO yes this is a rant, and quite possibly when my next pay comes in I will forget this ever happened…well until the next time it happens.