Writing Your Artist Statement, Information on How to Avoid Mistakes

Do you feel no inspiration or enthusiasm when you hear about writing artist statement? It is quite understandable and fair. You are concentrated on what you do and don’t really feel any desire to try on the writer’s work. However, modern life demands and competition leave not many options. You pull yourself together and set to your statement.

Unfortunately, it is not enough to provide physical availability of the statement as its content matters a lot. By means of the artist statements, you provide some deeper insights into your creative work and ideas for people. Your task is to uncover the message of your works and intrigue your audience with its uniqueness and deepness. Sound great but you are not sure how to implement it in practice? Do not worry; we are going to share some important factors, which should be avoided by you to gain a success.

Prepare multiple versions of your statement

It is hard to cover all target audiences within one statement. You can address to professionals and colleagues, potential employers, art gallery owners, other artists or simple people, who do not know much about art. Therefore, it is better to have several artist statements for such case. They should differ in volume and content depending on the audience. If you are appealing to people, who are new with art, limit your statement to a couple of paragraphs and make it comprehensible. When aiming at a bunch of professionals, you can go into some details and make your statement more specific.

Chose suitable wording

It is great that you know your sphere thoroughly, but you should know when to use this knowledge. Slang and specific terms that are used by an artist will limit the audience of people, who will understand and evaluate your statement. Do not make it overwhelming and complicated. Remember that everything of genius is simple.

Avoid Generalities

No doubt, your works can reveal some great goals and ideas that disturb the mind of the whole humanity. But will it be interesting for the readers to percept some general phrases and information about your work? Along with comprehensive and huge vision of your creative works, provide some specific information for people. Thus, it can be interesting for them how you created your work or what your purpose was.

Use Strong Statements

Remember that your artist statement can be the first acquaintance with your works for the audience. When you express a lot of doubts such as “I hope…”, “I tried….”, “I was attempting…”, people feel your own uncertainty in your works. Everyone has a lot of doubts about his or her artwork and it is quite a common situation. However, your goal is to convince people that your works are worth their attention. Ensure them that you put your heart in your works and strong statements will be useful by that.

The Last Word

Even if you consider yourself not talented in writing, you have one great advantage: you like what you do and know it better than anyone. No mature writer can write your artist statement with such passion and involvement as you can. Share your commitment to what you do with people through your artist statement. Tell them about the insights of your creative work but at the same time provoke a desire to learn more and admire your works. The artist statement should incorporate your strongest appeal to people and be completely saturated with love to your craft.

We know that it is hard to create a great artist statement at once and you should be patient with that. A lot of drafts will be written, a lot of mistakes will be corrected until you succeed in your goal. But do not be afraid of it, that’s worth the effort.