I will reply to this in more detail later, but I'll say this - cleaners on the mines in Western Australia make a great deal more than cleaners in the city, and as for art... well I've been working on full-time art for 5 months, and I've made $700 Australian. Not much, I made more than that a fortnight selling pillows to people two days a week.
I have some prospective art things on the horizon, but some of them won't pay at all, because sometimes I'm doing work for authors and publishers who like me just don't have the disposable income. *sigh*
Also, what you say about America may have a great deal of truth in it since I wonder if Americans value art more - almost ALL of my sales, pretty much every single one of them, have gone over to Americans. Not people from the UK, and not even many fellow Australians. It's why I didn't get a website with a .com.au prefix, because there just aren't a great deal of Aussies who buy art. There is perhaps one Australian that immediately comes to mind who has commissioned me for two pieces, I'm not sure of any others.
Even my extinct thylacine picture - an extinct native Australian animal - is now living in the UK. No one in Australia (who saw it, mind you, my coverage wasn't very big back then) wanted it. A UK woman did.
Re: naive impressions
I have some prospective art things on the horizon, but some of them won't pay at all, because sometimes I'm doing work for authors and publishers who like me just don't have the disposable income. *sigh*
Also, what you say about America may have a great deal of truth in it since I wonder if Americans value art more - almost ALL of my sales, pretty much every single one of them, have gone over to Americans. Not people from the UK, and not even many fellow Australians. It's why I didn't get a website with a .com.au prefix, because there just aren't a great deal of Aussies who buy art. There is perhaps one Australian that immediately comes to mind who has commissioned me for two pieces, I'm not sure of any others.
Even my extinct thylacine picture - an extinct native Australian animal - is now living in the UK. No one in Australia (who saw it, mind you, my coverage wasn't very big back then) wanted it. A UK woman did.
So maybe it's as much the country too. *sigh*