The artist who teaches: balancing pedagogy and commercial practice

01The trap of regular income

Teaching offers what art sales rarely provide: predictable income. When you have twenty students each paying fifty euros per month, you know that one thousand euros will arrive at the start of each month. This predictability is reassuring, and it can become a trap. The trap works like this: you take on additional classes because the money is welcome, which reduces your creation time, which reduces your output, which reduces your sales, which pushes you to take on even more classes to compensate. The vicious circle establishes itself gradually, and one day you realise you are spending thirty hours a week teaching and five hours creating.

The painter Josef Albers taught at the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College and then Yale for decades, and he managed to maintain a rigorous personal artistic practice alongside. But he also acknowledged that teaching required iron discipline to prevent it from cannibalising creation. His approach was simple: he treated his creation time with the same sanctity as his class hours. A class was a non-negotiable appointment with his students. Studio time was a non-negotiable appointment with himself.

02Defining your ideal ratio: teaching hours versus creation hours

There is no universal ratio that works for every teaching artist. But there is a threshold beyond which teaching begins to harm your practice. For most artists, this threshold sits around fifteen to twenty hours of teaching per week. Beyond that, the remaining time to create, manage the business side and recover physically and mentally becomes insufficient.

The artist and educator Hans Hofmann, whose painting school in New York trained generations of Abstract Expressionists, taught intensively but concentrated his classes in defined periods of the year, reserving entire months for pure creation. Robert Henri, painter of the Ashcan School, structured his weeks rigidly: certain days were exclusively devoted to teaching, others exclusively to the studio. Mixing the two in the same day, classes in the morning and painting in the afternoon, was for him a recipe for doing nothing well.

Do the exercise concretely. For one month, note how many hours you spend teaching, including preparation and travel, and how many hours you spend creating. If the ratio exceeds three hours of teaching for one hour of creation, you are probably becoming a teacher rather than an artist. Adjust accordingly.

03Teaching what enriches your practice, not what exhausts it

Not all teaching is equal in terms of impact on your own practice. A workshop where you teach your own technique, where you explore questions that concern you as an artist as well, can nourish your work rather than impoverish it. A class where you teach the basics of drawing to absolute beginners for the twentieth consecutive year may be financially useful but artistically sterile.

The conceptual artist John Baldessari taught at CalArts for years, and his classes were famous for their experimental approach that nourished his own practice as much as his students' work. He did not separate teaching from research. His classes were laboratories where he tested ideas that he then explored in his personal work. Conversely, an artist who teaches exclusively techniques they no longer practise in their own work ends up feeling divided between two unrelated identities.

When choosing your teaching commitments, ask yourself: will this class teach me something, force me to reformulate what I know, bring me into contact with questions I would not have addressed alone? If the answer is yes, the class has value beyond the income it generates. If the answer is no, it is purely bread-and-butter, and you should treat it as such: perhaps necessary, but to be limited to the strict minimum.

04Turning your students into potential collectors

Your students are a qualified audience for your work. They know your technique, they understand your process, they have seen the quality of your work up close. Some of them are potential collectors who have never bought art because they did not know an artist personally. You are that artist.

The artist and educator Wayne Thiebaud acknowledged that his students at the University of California, Davis formed a network that contributed to his visibility throughout his career. His former students became artists, gallerists, curators, collectors who continued to follow and support his work for decades.

The conversion of a student into a collector must be handled with tact. Do not sell your works during your classes. This would create discomfort and ambiguity in the pedagogical relationship. However, nothing prevents you from inviting your students to your exhibitions, sending them a link to your online gallery, mentioning that you sell your works when the subject arises naturally. The essential point is that the commercial relationship should be separate from the pedagogical one, while remaining accessible to those who are interested.

05Tax status: the teaching artist and how to declare

In most countries, income from art teaching and income from art sales fall under different tax regimes. In France, sales of original works by the artist fall under the artiste-auteur regime managed by URSSAF, with a specific contribution rate and reduced VAT of five point five per cent. Teaching income falls either under employment if you are hired by an institution, or under self-employment if you give classes as an auto-entrepreneur or liberal profession. In the United Kingdom, both activities can be declared under self-employment on a Self Assessment tax return. In the United States, both are typically reported as self-employment income on Schedule C.

The coexistence of these regimes may seem complicated, but it is perfectly legal and even common. Many artists combine different statuses for their sales and teaching activities. The key point is to separate the two revenue streams clearly in your accounting to benefit from the tax advantages specific to each regime.

06Creating despite pedagogical fatigue

Teaching is work that consumes mental energy in large quantities. After three hours of class correcting compositions, motivating discouraged students and explaining for the tenth time the difference between form shadow and cast shadow, you probably do not feel like standing in front of your easel. This pedagogical fatigue is real and there is no point denying it.

The artist and professor Richard Diebenkorn spoke openly about the difficulty of switching from teaching to creating in the same day. His solution was to separate the two radically: entire days of teaching followed by entire days of studio, never both in the same day if possible. When separation was not possible, he started with creation in the morning, when his energy was highest, and taught in the afternoon.

If you teach in the evening, create in the morning. If you teach in the morning, reserve uninterrupted afternoons for yourself. And if you teach all day on certain days, do not force yourself to create on those evenings. Rest and return to the studio the next day with renewed energy. Forced creation when you are exhausted does not produce work you will be proud of.

07Artedusa: a showcase for the artist who also teaches

On Artedusa, you can present and sell your artistic work independently of your teaching activity. The platform is designed for independent artists, and your status as an educator does not change the quality of your work or its value on the market. Show your students, your collectors and the world that teaching and creation are two facets of the same passion. Present your work on artedusa.com.