The Best Links for How To Write an Artist Statement

 

Has it happened to you yet? You’ve got your artwork prepared and finished, you’ve met the deadline date for applying and when you go to submit your piece for consideration to an exhibit, the show juror requests an Artist’s Statement from you.

 

What?! If you’re like me, you haven’t got one that doesn’t make you cringe when you read it. Or maybe, you’ve heard about Artist’s Statements, but managed to avoid writing one… Until Now.

 

Good news is, there’s a whole lot of advice out there on how to create a statement. And there’s no one right way. But that just kinda makes things all that much harder.

 

So, here are some links to get you going. But it’s probably not a one-stop-shop. You’ll probably need to visit a few websites, find the elements of each that work for you, adjust your statement a couple (three, four) times, and edit, edit, edit.

 

But just maybe, you’ll learn more about yourself and your art in the process. And every time you learn more about yourself, you will be able to speak more effectively about your art (and in case you haven’t discovered this yet, it’s really beneficial to be able to talk about your artwork with admirers).

 

Ready? I’ve got a list below and a few descriptive notes on each, to warm you up. Let’s get this done!

 

Agora Gallery’s tutorial is a good how-to article for writing an artist’s statement.

 

Getting Your Sh*t Together has advice in list format, if that works well for you.

 

And even better Getting Your Sh*t Together offers examples of artist’s statements. Comparing examples always works well for me.

 

The Art League blog has delightful examples of artist’s statements, followed with a breakdown of why they work so well.

 

ArtBusiness.com presents a more academic look at the subject of writing an artist’s statement, but with the added bonus of some helpful “Additional considerations”, at the end.

 

 

ArtSpace made me laugh, and because of their humor and insights, gave me a new perspective.

 

The Abundant Artist’s blog has a short, but actually really helpful set of tips.

 

Format Magazine’s article looks daunting at first glance, but any piece that starts out with, “Make a mind map” is Aces in my book!

 

Now, I’ve got to get to work on using these articles to revive my own Artist’s Statement. Check back: I’ll link to my statement when I have it done.

 

Have you found a good article on how to write an Artist’s Statement or written one yourself? Tell me in the comments below.