Fortunately, an artist friend who had taken a job out-of-state offered to rent them her two bedroom co-op in Pelham Parkway, in the Bronx, at a low enough price that Ms. Lowenthal could also afford her own studio in the South Bronx. But when her studio lease is up in five years, Ms. Lowenthal isn’t sure they’ll stay in the city.

She grew up on the Upper West Side, and while she loves living here and has found it enormously helpful as an artist, “as I get older I think maybe I don’t know if I need to be at the center of things. There are benefits to not having to think about how you’re going to make rent every month.”

In her book “Made in Brooklyn,” Amanda Wasielewski, an artist and art history researcher at Stockholm University who did her doctoral research in New York, argues that the burden of paying for space pushes many New York artists in more entrepreneurial directions.

Dr. Wasielewski, who rented a work space in Bushwick in 2015, said she was really surprised that so many people in her studio space were working on commercial projects for corporate clients. “I think it comes out of necessity for sure,” said Dr. Wasielewski.

Many artists take on either part- of full-time jobs in aligned commercial fields. Mr. Jackman, the photographer on the Upper East Side, said that in addition to taking more photo assisting gigs than he would like, he and many other New York artists he knows have found themselves developing more commercial practices — that is, producing more of what they know will sell well and less of what they themselves find interesting and challenging.

“It’s changing the work we’re making and in some ways making us less competitive,” Mr. Jackman said. “I feel like Berlin is breeding more young artists than New York. They’re going in a more conceptual direction and gaining attention.”

And though working from one’s apartment may be the most straightforward way to reduce expenses, many artists said their work — and their personal lives — suffered when they did.