Earning Money at Art

I've been reading the discussions about art and earning money and somehow the two have almost joined together that is without earning money you are not an artist. I realise you need money to live and it's frustrating. However when you think of Turner and his famous painting The Fighting Temeraire it was in a shop window for many years without selling, would you say he was not an artist. Surely you are an artist if you have a great desire to produce art and can't exist without doing so. Just because the general public have not seen your art or don't understand your work does not mean you are not an artist. I think it is better to work in another job (if you can't sell) and not be constrained by general trends in "what is thought of as art" which is soul destroying. The general trend at the moment seems to be hands-on-work even if this is not of a high standard and digital art is somehow not art. People get mixed up and don't realise you do art from the heart and can't change merely because they want you to.

An example would be to take two cartoonists who are both skilled at drawing and look at their latest work. One may draw a cartoon well, but simply not be funny to you, at least today. So which one is the actual cartoonist? The answer is they both are it just depends who is looking at the cartoon and whether they see the joke.