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Perhaps the crux of the question is how distinctions of "worthiness" relate to art that's actively selling, compared to the concept of art as a hobby.
Like it or not, the pragmatic baseline of economic existence is that nothing that doesn't trade for actual currency has "real" value. Ergo, the job at 7-11 is "real", but making paintings on speculation and a spotty, unreliable pecuniary return is . . . well, not nearly as "real".
I don't want to descend into a pessimistic paranoia, but I truly worry how the "useful" active market for highly-skilled artwork has waned during the past 80+ years, and with it, the necessary "audience appreciation" that results in market demand. Only 25 years ago, all aspects of visual representation that could not be photographed depended upon the minds and eye/hand skills of artists from sign writers to cartoonists, animators, matte painters and ad illustrators to "fine" artists.
Electronics and the computer have cleared a path for the artistically inept, and making the processes formerly used to produce this work as obsolete as the horse and buggy, with a resulting loss of quality and tastefulness. Ever since, an explosion of computer-generated images bombards us with an unfathomable, continual stream of colors, forms, and images from the time we awaken 'til we close our eyes . . . and most of it is bad and getting worse.
"A Portrait of the Artist as a Hobbyist" is furthered by perceptions that to be an "artist" one must be a madman or an eccentric bohemian starving in a garrett, whose worth will only be recognized long after he or she is very dead. Compounding this are notions that the making of art results not from study, training, intense practice and hard work, but from infused knowledge ("talent"), and that serious bodies of work result spontaneously out of serendipity, and erratic spur-of- the -moment "inspirations".
Popular perception equates pursuing an art career with an indolent self-improvement at best ("relaxation"), and with misanthropic self-indulgence at the worst. Owing to misunderstanding of how a few elementary art-making processes are utilized in occupational therapy for the mentally disturbed, it's often concluded that the results of "art therapy" are equivalent to the output of dedicated professional artists.
When a pickled shark commands a price in six figures and the starving of a poor, hapless dog to death is proclaimed to be "art", who can blame the man in the street if he is confused?
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