[frereubu]

This is close to what happened to me. I went back to study sculpture in my 30s, and although I loved it, and still have creative projects, I realised pretty quickly that I wasn't ready to go back to a hand-to-mouth lifestyle, living in shabby digs in the cheap part of town. Now I have a family and there's absolutely no way I'd want to go back to that kind of financial insecurity. For every Damien Hirst and Grayson Perry there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of struggling artists. I met quite a few fine artists who were full-time professionals making genuinely wonderful work, represented by well-regarded galleries, who despite being able to occasionally sell pieces in the tens of thousands of pounds were still scraping a living teaching at art college. (Not helped by the fact that galleries generally take at least 50% of any sale price).