I recently read a post about the writer Zora Neale Hurston ( a brilliant novelist now recognized as one of the most important voices in American literature) that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.
One detail in particular stayed with me: she died at sixty-nine in a welfare home and was buried in an unmarked grave in Florida. As I sat with the article, I found myself thinking about — the story many of us creatives quietly accept about ourselves. The story of the starving artist.
If you are an artist or creative person, you probably know exactly what I mean. Somewhere along the way many artists absorb the idea that deep commitment to the craft somehow requires struggle. That instability and obscurity is simply part of the process. That loving the work means learning to live without much else. And to be fair, creating can be all-consuming.
I know this personally as I’ve gone days where I’ve been so consumed with creating that I’ve forgotten to eat, ignored the phone, and couldn’t think about anything except the work in front of me. When you are deep in that space where something meaningful is trying to come through you — everything else fades into the background. It truly does become all consuming.
But you know what else is all-consuming? Hunger, safety and survival. And to be honest, it is very difficult to create when you are constantly worried about how you’re going to pay the rent, the bills and all of the other demanding financial obligations that come with just being alive. And while the world may celebrate the finished masterpiece, the artist still has to live while the work is being made.
Lately I’ve been thinking about that differently. What if the goal was never to become the starving artist? What if the goal was to become the thriving one?
Not because money is the purpose of art — it isn’t. But stability creates something incredibly valuable for a creative mind: space. We need space to think, experiment, take risks and to keep going.
Artists need time and space to create AND the ability to live with dignity while we are doing the work that matters to us. And maybe — just maybe — we should allow ourselves to imagine something even bigger than that.
Not just survival. Not even just sustainability. But abundance. Not abundance as vanity or excess. Abundance as freedom. The freedom to create without constant fear. The freedom to explore ideas fully. The freedom to build a life that supports the work rather than competing with it.
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately through my own journey with Canvas 2 Capital — the idea that creativity and ownership do not have to live on opposite sides of life. We can create. We can build. And we can live well while doing both. Because the world doesn’t just need great art. It needs artists who believe their lives are worthy of more than survival. Artists who allow themselves to imagine a life where creativity and abundance can exist in the same breath.
Maybe the first step toward that kind of life is simply refusing to accept the old story of the starving artist.
And choosing instead to become the thriving one.