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If you work hard and only sell a small $300 painting a day, that’s a good payout at the end of the year.

$80M a year good (weekdays). But where's the target audience for that? How many people are seriously gonna spend that much money on a painting or sculpture that, really, isn't that different from the 100s or 1000s of other artists selling the same stuff, to where even a significant number of artists can sustain themselves at that level (or even half of that)?

And for a painting to be worth that much, how much time and effort is required? Ten hours (netting $30/hr)? Twenty ($15/hr)? More? Yes, internet helps you find a wider audience, but it also helps buyers find a much wider market. If you can manage to develop a relationship with a collector, awesome!, but again, how realistic is that for your generic artist? You have to be actually good enough to make something they want, and have the luck to come across them to even have the opportunity for the sale / start of any potential relationship.

Sure, you, and a couple friends, might be putting in the work and effort required to find that audience and generate enough to sell, but in general most "artists" don't and can't. The sheer number of people with useless art degrees (not to mention those that do it without a degree), simply doesn't have sufficient support to do that, if even a small fraction of artists put in the effort.

I have known 2 guys who make decent livings oil painting desert and mountain scenery. Their agents sold all they could produce. There is a big market for beautiful original oil paintings of such things. But it takes competence and hard work as a painter.

Colleges don’t teach such things. In fact they ruin painters and writers as well. To say that art and capitalism don’t mix is incredibly stupid. Art has always been funded by the wealthy. It only goes away when the govt buys “art”.