To pursue a career as a professional artist is to expect a lot from your job.

…more, it seems, than most people expect from their own.

Professional artists and those who aspire to the same status expect the work to be both financially sustainable and creatively fulfilling.

Some people seem satisfied, simply, to find a day job they don’t hate and compensate for any lack of creativity with hobbies.

…and others view their vocation as a tolerable compromise that buys time for the art they place at the center of their lives.

Regardless of which takes priority, it often seems that we have to choose: Art or a steady paycheck.

But why would it have to be one or the other?

Why couldn’t our work be both financially sustainable and creatively fulfilling?

Are we asking too much?

Is it even realistic to imagine?

In this first lesson of a course titled You’re A Better Artist Than You Think, we’ll introduce a crucial question that could save your art career (even if you don’t have one yet) and rethink a common belief that often prevents artists from becoming professionals.

But, as with every lesson throughout the course, we’ll begin by looking to history for answers. (History always has answers.)

Today we’ll hear the “origin story” of Mary Blair, a mid-century Disney artist whose “renown in the company,” writes historian Nathalia Holt, “was second only to Walt’s.”

In her life and work (which is on display throughout this post) we’ll find a more vivid picture of what it means to make a living from one’s creative passion, what often blocks many of us from a similar experience and how this fundamental shift in the way we think about the art vs. money conundrum can affect the quality of our work, whether we find it fulfilling, our sense of self, of belonging, of motivation and inspiration.