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Making Art and Making a Living

Mason Currey

Book cover: Making Art and Making a Living

Many of us are drawn to a life in the arts but daunted by how to balance that ambition with the very real need to pay rent and put food on the table. It is impossible to become an accomplished painter, composer, or novelist without spending time experimenting, making false starts, absorbing criticism, reading, talking, and moping about the house. All this time must be purchased, one way or another. Is the history of art and ideas just a history of rich kids?

The answer, of course, is no. William Carlos Williams was a family doctor. Franz Kafka was an insurance man, as were Charles Ives and Wallace Stevens. Grace Hartigan temped. James Joyce mooched off his brother; Christopher Isherwood ingratiated himself with a wealthy uncle. Virginia Woolf and Louisa May Alcott were determined to make their writing pay no matter what. And their material circumstances had an impact on all of their creative outputs.

From family money to jobs to colorful schemes, Mason Currey, author of the acclaimed Daily Rituals, explores both the well-worn and unlikely paths forward for the up-and-coming artist. Making Art and Making a Living is an entertaining and thought-provoking examination of the collision of creative ambitions with real-world necessities and of the messy, glorious, torturous compromises that gifted individuals have patched together when facing the eternal dilemma of an artistic life.

Hardback

ISBN: 9781800751149

Published: April 9, 2026

Ebook

ISBN: 9781800751156

Published: April 9, 2026

Book cover: Making Art and Making a Living

Category:
Non-fiction

Reviews for Making Art and Making a Living

“A wonderfully readable, anecdote-filled tour of the inventive and sometimes eyebrow-raising ways artists through history have sought to transcend the everyday while also paying the bills. Mason Currey never tells the reader what to do—creativity is too personal for that—but there’s vast inspiration, and consolation, in these pages.” – Oliver Burkeman, New York Times bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks

“Mason Currey is the undisputed master of finding, in the messy lives of great artists and thinkers throughout time, deeply human lessons about cultivating meaning in our current age.” – Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author of Slow Productivity and Deep Work

“A delicious peek at the rich husbands, family money, business schemes, and desk jobs that really filled famous artists’ bank accounts, this book is a balm for anyone who has ever fretted that they are not a ‘real’ artist because they don’t pay their bills with their art.” – Ann Friedman, co-author of Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close

“By telling the stories of creative people in the past, Mason Currey gives readers a wider range of possibilities for the future. I always find much to steal from his books.” – Austin Kleon, New York Times bestselling author of Steal Like an Artist

Praise for Daily Rituals:

Utterly fascinating’ – Sunday Times

‘Entertaining [and] thought-provoking’ – Daily Telegraph

‘A fascinating little book’ – Financial Times

‘A thoroughly researched, minutely annotated and delightful book’ – Literary Review

Author

Mason Currey

Author image: Mason Currey
Author image: Mason Currey