The Afflicted: Glover Park resident Antoinette Wysocki, 32: full-time corporate VP, part-time struggling painter.

Diagnosis: artistic deficit disorder. Wysocki’s found that supporting her art can preempt actually creating it. “I work full-time so that I can afford my studio,” says Wysocki, who earned her B.F.A. at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2000; four years later, she suited up as veep of D.C.-based men’s products outfit Grooming Lounge. “But when you’re trying to make a living and not be a starving artist, work can tend to overshadow what you really want to do.”

Symptoms: The corporate and artistic grinds can lead to either atrophy or exhaustion. “I haven’t been able to make it into my studio [a shared 1,500-square-foot space in Northeast] for the last three months,” says Wysocki. “It’s become very expensive storage space.” Wysocki tries to mount a show of her color-saturated abstract works each year and says she’s had to “take sick days after painting through the night. I’ll wake up and won’t be functional enough to go in.”

Treatment: Take your artistic inspiration where you can find it—and accept a few sleepless nights. “It would take a big change of lifestyle for me to lock myself in the studio for a year and figure it out,” she says. But she argues that corporate stiffs should find time for art whenever possible—including normal business hours. “As an artist, the doodle on your shoe is still creating,” Wysocki says. But, she adds, “you need to make it a priority.…So you get tired. So what.”

Artist with a problem? E-mail problem@washingtoncitypaper.com.