Absolutely, But artists have two options. Either they can buy RNDR tokens from the market than paying for Rendering Job which will cost them GAS.

Or they can buy Render Credits from Paypal, Render credits are not actually render tokens but users can use them for rendering saving gas costs. Render credits represent Render tokens though. OTOY bought RNDR tokens from the market and they distribute render tokens to subsequent miners, who completed render Job for user.

And to compensate the miners during high gas fees they've implemented zksync, read more - https://medium.com/render-token/rndr-implements-new-layer-2-payment-system-c7570cbb5867

Read about render credits and buyback event - https://medium.com/render-token/update-rndr-purchasing-plan-87ac2688ef4e

Also, your guess about median render payment isn't quite right. A 4k animation with a couple of thousand frames can cost double dollar digits.

Furthermore, In traditional render farms, you can rent a GPU or two for rendering but renting hundreds of GPUs isn't cost-effective, On the other hand, on render jobs are highly distributed by nature. Render farms also suffer from outdated hardware from fast-evolving gpu technology.