The artist’s career is rarely straightforward. Jo Rosenthal speaks to several artists about the difficult choices made along the way.
The myth of the artist’s career is still considered a winding path from studio to gallery to large bank account and repetition to recognition. But talk to artists long enough and a different picture emerges. The picture painted is one shaped by detours, pauses, reinventions, and sometimes full-blown pivots away from the work that once defined them. In an era where you can invent and reinvent yourself a thousand times, many artists are rethinking what it means to sustain a creative life, especially when the traditional structures no longer fit or pay the rent.
What happens when the studio door closes, temporarily, by necessity or because new passions have been uncovered? Which instincts endure beyond the making of work, and how do they resurface in different fields and creative endeavors?
The impulse to pivot stems from a desire to try something new. Not everything is driven by crisis or burnout and curiosity can be reason enough. Becoming an artist isn’t a phase so much as a permanent way of seeing that doesn’t disappear when attention turns elsewhere. The practice may change, but the identity rarely does.
For David Steine, a musician turned lawyer, the shift wasn’t born of artistic doubt but of necessity. “Money, frankly,” he says. With little of a financial safety net and a parent suddenly unemployed, Steine needed stability to support both himself and his family. Music, and his more experimental conceptual sound work, simply couldn’t pay the bills. The transition to law was drastic: “The law school process is really detrimental to creative thought,” he reflects. “You have to think extremely objectively and empirically… it’s not an occupation for flights of fancy or playful creativity. You must act and think in goal-oriented ways, or your client is screwed.” Even years later, he notes, returning to music requires effort, but the creative impulse persists. “If you want to maintain a healthy creative practice, don’t go into law,” he jokes. “Get a regular 9-to-5 or something that has pockets of time to be bored and not use your brain.”
Sage Adams notes that the pivot wasn’t about necessity but about preserving passion. “My original practice kind of came predetermined,” she recalls. By 16, one of her first photo projects had been featured in The New York Times, and she later shot the iconic cover of SZA for Ctrl. But Adams quickly realized that turning passion into paycheck isn’t the only path. “Capitalism can make it seem like you have to use what you love to make money, but it’s not the only way. You can also have other jobs,” she says. Adams learned to navigate both worlds of working in corporate while keeping her creative brain active. She says it’s a balancing act that demands structure and relentless scheduling. Yet the trade-off has been clarity and intentionality. “When I sit at my desk now, I know what I want to make. I’ll have been thinking about it for weeks, fine-tuning details, building it all out in my head. My art time means more to me than it ever has.”
Elizabeth Tamkin’s journey took her from the studio to the fashion world, though she still thinks of herself as a painter at heart. While earning her BFA, she began working in fashion. The further she moved from painting, the harder it became to return, both in skill and confidence. “The fashion world is tough, but the art world can be even tougher,” she admits. Imposter syndrome existed in both arenas, but it was harder to hide from when producing visual work. Ultimately, she chose the path that felt clearer and more achievable at the time, though the creative impulse never left her. Even if she isn’t painting regularly, her visual training informs everything she does as a personal stylist and writer. Now she sees all her creative endeavors similarly. “While my practice looks different now, I like to believe I’m still working that same creative muscle. It’s just found another form.”
For Anna Sheffield, becoming a jeweler wasn’t a plan and it happened almost by accident. In the early 2000s, after showing and selling her art in small ways, she began to feel hints of the gallery world through exhibitions, grant applications, and the hope that the right collectors might notice. Jewelry, by contrast, unfolded effortlessly. “It wasn’t just a more reliable way to make a living, but it was still my creativity, my ideas, and at first, very literally my hands making everything,” she says. Jewelry offered a way to share her work more immediately and intimately, while her earlier practice in slow, site-specific, multimedia art lingered in memory. Returning to making objects with clay in hand she discovered familiar forms resurfacing, connecting past and present. The shift, Sheffield notes, was perspective: “The work became less about me and more about we and sharing moments of the beautiful and the humbly sacred through material, ritual, light, sound, and a sense of place.” Sheffield’s jewelry and home objects, she explains, are vessels for that wonder, speaking to her creative sensibility in entirely new ways.
What emerges from these varied paths is that a creative identity rarely disappears, even when the work itself shifts. Each pivot reflects a negotiation between circumstance, and possibility, whether that’s pursuing financial stability, exploring opportunity, or following curiosity wherever it leads. The careers we imagine as linear are often just the surface; beneath them lies choices and detours that ultimately define the creative life.
You can pivot your career as many times as you want. Each turn, pause, or reinvention doesn’t erase the artist you are, but it adds to it, layering experience and perspective. Creativity, it seems, isn’t tied to one medium or one job but rather it is a lens through which you move through the world. The work may evolve but the artist remains, always ready to emerge in new ways and new chapters.
