"Many are having to earn quite a lot of their income from other places. It certainly isn't a picture of a healthy or well-resourced sector."
Most artists had to subsidise their work with some other employment, most notably teaching. In general, artists only spent half of their week actually making art, the survey showed.
Many artists rely on grants from CNZ to create new work, and the survey showed 96 per cent of respondents had applied for a grant.
However, only 38 per cent of artists had successfully applied for funding.
"It's still the current situation in terms of CNZ's project funding -- one application in three or four is usually funded through our project funding round," Ms Kerr said.
"There are other ways artists can support their work, not just through project grants, but those certainly are important and continue to be important.
"We're also working very hard to make sure there's a strong infrastructure for the arts through the professional organisations we fund... they provide a lot of the work for our artists."
CNZ had been using the data to focus on developing policies to enhance artist career development and training to gain marketing and business skills, Ms Kerr said.
"The arts is a viable career but a challenging one. I think one of the most interesting things about the survey is the large number of artists who are self-employed or freelance, which is hugely higher than the working population at large
"The figures are sobering in terms of what the average figures are, but certainly for some artists there is a viable career there. It's not a career which develops in the way that many other careers do, and it won't be one where there is a salaried full-time position as a kind of end point to it.
"Artists will need business acumen as well as their artistic skills and knowledge."
Associate Arts Minister Judith Tizard said the survey confirmed the importance of support provided by CNZ.
"It confirms what we already knew from anecdotal evidence -- that our professional artists work incredibly hard at what they do, that the majority of them also work at other jobs and projects over and above their primary arts practice, and that they do this knowning they will earn less than the average New Zealand wage," she said in a statement.
Ms Tizard said proof that artists' earnings were at the lower end of the scale meant the professionals had been subsiding New Zealand's image as a creative and innovative nation through their hard work.
Key findings
* 70 per cent of artists are self-employed or freelance.
* Their median income is $20,700.
* Male artists' median income is more than twice that of female artists ($31,000 compared with $15,000).
* In general, artists spent only half their week producing art.
- NZPA
Creative New Zealand:
Portrait of the Artist
[PDF]
