Keep your artist’s statement simple, truthful and short, advises Mike Barr
Mike Barr is a Fellow of the Royal South Australian Society of Arts. He has won over 80 awards, including 17 first prizes. You can find more of Mike’s work at www.mikebarrfineart.com
After reading a rather baffling artist’s statement the other day I thought it was worth a few words. It’s now common for galleries and art prizes to request artists to come up with a statement about themselves and their work. This is in addition to any achievements that they have gained over the years. The artist’s statement is important.
I have to confess to being highly entertained by many such statements. Not only are many of them works of fiction, but they can be totally incomprehensible and even more than that, just plain hilarious! For some reason the art world has fostered a kind of babble that no one really understands but at the same time has become highly regarded and acceptable among themselves – almost like a pass to enter a very special club.
How about this for a typical example:
‘The artist has explored the space between subconscious and conscious elements in the landscape by using colour and form as navigational pointers to our innermost feelings.’
Hand-in-hand with the artist’s statement is the statement or story of the individual work. It has become a trend particularly in the bigger art prizes to have a theme that artists must paint to and the statement about the painting is probably more important that the work itself. If you can articulate an otherwise unfathomable painting into the theme of the prize, you are almost home – and if you can add some ‘art-speak’ too, then succe
