WHENEVER THE U.S. CENSUS is taken, it tries to count the different professions. Several cover the arts of some kind, but in the case of painters, they would come under "visual arts." This mixes together ceramicists, commercial artists, and many other variations.
We are left not only with a question mark on the true number of "fine art painters" serious enough to make it a profession, but also with the perennial puzzle of defining "artist." It’s always a pleasure to hear people say, "I am an artist," or, "We artists," for it sets apart not only a profession but a kind of unique human being. Almost like a golden unicorn.
The artistic person is found in many walks of life and many fields. While everybody enjoys art, or relishes beauty and drama, a limited number make it their life's work to create such effects. So the artists is clearly different from the non-artist. How is that so?
Best we can tell, "artists” of the past were not given that moniker. They were rather seen as "craftsmen." Even up to the Italian Renaissance, the word "artist" was not used: artisan sufficed. In these cases, clearly, the person in question produced objects of art, typically as a trade, not as a hobby or pastime (like the Sunday painter).
Parallel to the rise of craftsmen was the emergence or oracles, shamans, fortune tellers and other unusual individual who were said to have contact with the gods. They were set apart, sometimes feared, but usually revered for their "gift" of divine frenzy or insight.
It could be said that these two profession finally met in the Renaissance, at least if we take the word of its most prominent chronicler, Giorgio Vasari, that the best artists had "divine inspiration." Granted, even Vasari spoke of craft, calling such adepts "artisans."
But the flood gates could not hold the tide, and in time "artists" were to be seen as craftsmen and shamans all in one. The poets of old, for example, were often heralded as oracles and shamans, their media being the spoken or written word. So high was the poet held in public estimation, that painters, too, wanted to be seen in that light.
Eventually, painters claimed to be poets, putting them in the ranks of the liberal arts. Some of the critics agreed, but others insisted that there was a difference. The painter was not a particular inspired soul, but a craftsman, plain and simple.
After Vasari, the painter did become known as an "artist," and in modern France in particular—a singular cauldron of art production—took on the mantel of a poet as well. Not the kind of poet we may think of, however. The French developed the idea of the poète maudit, "the accursed poet," a revered figure who is half-crazy and half derelict, and usually debauched: an outsider who is against society, dedicated to saying and doing poetic things (some of it in writing).
The merger of this kind of poet with painters is best seen the operatic drama La bohème, in which two painters and their girlfriend (a love triangle) lived in destitution for the sake of their art. It was a compelling romantic vision, and spinoffs such as the slogan, "starving artist" were born. Van Gogh seemed to fit this, as would many others. So in the end, the artists is not only a craftsmen but a person "possessed" of the artistic spirit, pursuing it even in the face of rejection, calamity, and starvation (though we are yet to find an artist who literally starved).
All in all, this romantic idea has accrued to the "artist." And rightfully so, for some artists do indeed make their work, their thoughts, and their activities orbit entirely around their artistic vision. Perhaps the true artist is like the golden unicorn, or the black swan, a unique being, rare but still present, in a general population of craftsmen.
Whatever the case, the U.S. Census of occupations will never ferret this out. The general public is quite at ease with people calling themselves artists, for it is common parlance, means no more than "a maker of art," and does not seem arrogant in the least. Still, a bit of the old shamanistic aura, the artists as seer and oracle, a species apart with "divine inspiration," still lingers, and as this is harmless, it's all for the good.
For my part, however, “artist” as a “craftsman” who spends a preponderance of time making artwork, is about right.