According to the following links, the artist has had to sheer away from the community and arting due to personal life reasons, including but probably not limited to unemployment, which led them to become a full time artist. Unfortunately, it also appears that they did not manage to keep passion for the job, and the artist also admitted to underprice their artwork, which possibly led to burnout and unfinished comissions, the latter fact can be confirmed by looking at many furaffinity profile shouts claiming the artist to be a thief.

It also appears that at some point, even without proper financial stability, the artist got invited to participate in a Furry Convention, without expenses as implicated on the google document below.
Note: I'm inclined to believe that the fact they participated in a convention despite not having much money is what inspired the idea that The Artist had lied, and actually decided to steal the money and hide from socials.

• The document which the artist wrote can be found on the following archived link, as well as his currently active twitter:

Google docs | Archived Google Docs
Tweet | Archived Tweet