99.8%: The Attrition Rate of Artists in Australia

We are all born artists but very few of us stay that way in Australia. Just 0.2% of us in fact. Of that tiny figure, only 2% of them make a decent living out of their art alone. That looks like this: 0.004% of the entire population of Australia. But that doesn’t stop people. The odds of winning the lottery are something like one in 45 million, but people still buy tickets. There’s lots and lots of failed lottery millionaires in this country but no one seems to think of themselves that way, so why is it so hard for artists to give up the dream when the odds were never that much good to begin with?