This topic of selling out is completely ridiculous.
You’re a “real” artist until people like you.
Right up until you get what you have been striving for your entire artistic life:
For people to actually care about what you make, or have to say.
Forget people’s judgment.
Van Gogh would have sold out in a flat second.
“Selling out” is the label that so many creatives are afraid of being branded with. That’s absurd—as though there were some single standard of what artistic credibility and audience should be. You alone are the judge of that.
-Ryan Holiday, Perennial Seller