Visual artists in the island provinces of the Philippines often find themselves navigating through adversities in the production and dissemination of their creative work. With the visual-arts praxis being exclusively cited in the nation's capital city, the majority of artists spread over an archipelago of seven thousand islands fall under the notion of struggling, but persevering creator. This paper aims to describe and evaluate the art ecology of Cebu City, the art-related conditions of artists and their tenacity. The methodology used for case-creation: semi-structured interviews, in-depth interviews, and observation. The main finding of the study is that contemporary visual artists in the island province of Cebu, Philippines perceive the struggles from the production to the consumption of art as customary to their milieus. The study plots the current visual-arts ecology model of the locale and proposes future innovations for the development of the sector's value chain. From the context of a developing country, the study also expands the discussion between creating art for art's sake and art as a market commodity through the intermediate position of artists.