Creating an Artist Statement

Producing an artist statement can be difficult to describe what you are creating however this is very important to have when explaining to someone who you have never spoken to before about the project you have produced so far.

During this morning's lecture we discussed the importance of an artist statement and used useful exercises of what to do and what not to do when writing an artist statement.

Firstly, when writing an artist statement it is very important not to 'waffle' on as this is only a short description of your collection. Let the work speak for itself along with a summary or introduction of the project you have produced.

When writing your artist statement you must include 3 things such as Why? What? and How? having these 3 questions will outline a structure of what your work entails, what medium the work is such as photo, sculpture or painting and also what you are trying to communicate with what you have produced. Including things such as what field of photography, what you have used to represent this and target audience is useful to include as this defines the work effectively without overpowering the work as a hole.

An easy exercise to do when creating an artist statement is to look at the photographs as a collection and write down elements that all the photographs contain such as the environment, type of photography and colour or monochrome toned. When building up a one word this is practically a bullet form list of your artist statement already without you even realising. Another useful exercise that has helped me before in the past is writing a 50 word brief artist statement using the 3 questions, Why? What? and How?, after this then write a 100 word artist statement and so on with 150. This allows you to become more descriptive with what you want your audience to know and what your project is about.

Harley Kelly.