How To Write an Artist's Statement

What Your Artist's Statement Is and Does For You
Your artist's statement is your chance to communicate why you make what you do. It's also a way to communicate the foundations of the work that may be very central to your process and/or the resulting work, but may or may not be obvious to the viewer. It's your chance to put the work in context, to situate it in its thread of art history, to draw the connections back to its antecedents, to help the viewer understand it's conceptual underpinnings.

Your artist's statement can enrich the viewer's experience of your work.  Sure, we'd all like to think our work stands alone, sans explanation, but the fact is you probably read an artist's statement yourself to dig a little deeper when you are intrigued by his or her work. And the statement definitely influences the conversation around your work, whether by a dealer, curator, or member of the press.  Your artist's statement can be incorporated into a press release about your exhibition and picked up by the press when they write about your show, so any help you can give a reviewer to talk about your work in the way that you want it discussed is to your benefit.

Most importantly maybe, your artist's statement forces you to be clear in your own mind as to why you are making the work you do.  It can help you check your roots and set your course...or at least be clear about the validity of the course you're on.  It can also help you clearly and sparklingly talk about your work.

Some Basic Nuts and Bolts
It's short.  Your statement can be anywhere from a paragraph to a page.

The artist's statement, unlike your bio, is written in the first person (i.e. "I," "me," "my").  In other words, "I have been" instead of "Marcel Duchamp has been..."

The artist's statement does not contain information about things like exhibitions, education, collections, awards and so-on. Those already have a place in your resume or CV.

Specifically What The Statement Addresses
First you will address what you do. You will mention the media and if relevant why you use the media you do. If the choice of media is related to the content or conceptual underpinnings of the work, an explanation of that ought to be included as well. Is technique important to the work that you make? If so, you might want to talk about process or technique.  Is the work in series? How does it connect to your past work?

Next you will consider why you do what you do.  This is the place for mining vision and the ideas and inspiration behind the work.  What is the concept underlying your work? Is there a dominant metaphor you are exploring through your work?  Is your work thematic? Are you influenced by any particular artists or arts movement? If so, you might state that the work is in the vein of, or inspired by that artist or movement. If your work takes that movement and twists it in a new way, here's your chance to talk about it. 

A Simple Plan of Attack
Before you begin to write, you can do a couple of things to prepare. First you can go to galleries or the websites of galleries that sell work you admire, and read the artist's statements. The more that you see the way other artists tackle the task of writing the artist's statement, the better. In museums, the curator's statements might also give you some ideas about how to write about your work. Unfortunately both of these examples can sometimes be convoluted and overblown. No matter. Seeing something done wrong can be as edifying as seeing something done right.

You can read the critical writings surrounding a movement you consider to be the root of your work.  You can gather any texts or quotes or images that have ever set you on fire and think about not only why they matter to you, but how they inform the work that you make.

Then, you'll need to sit down and brainstorm, pen in hand. And brainstorming means writing down everything you can think of without censoring yourself.

Even if you don't consider writing your strong suit, surely you occasionally talk about what you make.  Write simply as if you were talking to a friend about your work. Write down any word you think of that you associate with your work, artists you admire or are inspired by or feel an affinity for, descriptors of your work, and so on.  Then, you can take a stab at answering some of the questions posed above.

With the results of a brainstorming session in hand, and some idea about how others structure the statement, you can start molding your own. It's as significant as any piece of visual or performative art you've ever made, being the web that holds them to one another and gives them an alternative face to the viewer.

Once you have accumulated pages of raw materials, try to group relevant bits, stitching together the what and more importantly the why of your work.  You will make statements. You will be lucid and succinct.  And you will whittle it all down to something between a paragraph and a page.

When you love it, you can ask for feedback from artist, writer, or dealer. But when you do, be specific.  Ask whether your statement makes its point clearly answering the questions of what you make and why.  It's important to ask for specific feedback because a general, "What do you think?" can bring buckets of untargeted comments and queries that can muddy the waters rather than bring focus.  You've already done the heavy lifting to get the statement to this point, feedback should be for fine tuning.

Hate to sound like the back of a shampoo bottle, ("Lather. Rinse. Repeat.") but once you write a statement, you'll likely do it again. Your statement needs to change with you as you explore new territory. But if you consider making the statement a project of getting clear with yourself, rather than writing an essay or a placard for the wall of a MOCA gallery, it may get easier or even become an important part of your ongoing process.

Lisa Radon
http://radon.variousartists.org
email: lisaradon (at) variousartists.org