What is an artist statement? Examples and how to write one

What is an artist statement?

An artist statement is a short text you write about your own work, in the first person. It tells a reader what the work is, how it is made and what it is about. Its job is to stand in for you when you are not there: on your website, beside the work in an exhibition, or in front of a jury reading two hundred applications.

You will need one for:

• your website or portfolio;
• applications to open calls, grants, residencies and art schools;
• gallery submissions and exhibition proposals;
• the wall text and press release for a show, which are usually written from it.

It is not a biography, a list of exhibitions or an essay on art theory. Where you studied and where you have shown belong in your artist CV.

What should an artist statement include?

Almost every clear statement answers three questions, in this order. Start with what can be seen, because a reader who cannot picture the work will not follow the ideas.

One or two sentences for each part is enough. If the statement is for a specific series or exhibition, add a sentence saying which work it covers.

What are some good artist statement examples?

The five statements below were written for this guide as models and are not by real artists. Each follows the what, how, why structure. Read them for how concrete they are, then look at the note under each.

Painting: artist statement example

I paint the rooms of houses just after people have left them: a kitchen with one chair pulled out, a hallway with the light still on. The paintings are small, rarely more than sixteen inches across, and made in oil on panel over several weeks, working from memory and quick drawings instead of photographs. I am interested in how much of a person stays behind in an arrangement of ordinary objects, and how little a painting needs to show before a viewer starts to imagine who lives there. I keep the color close and the edges soft so the image feels remembered more than observed.

Why it works: the first sentence lets you see a painting. Size, material and method are stated as facts, and the idea is put in words anyone would use.

Photography: artist statement example

For six years I have photographed the same twelve miles of river at the edge of the city where I grew up, returning each month with a large-format camera. The pictures record what changes and what refuses to: a bank that floods, a bridge repainted, the same man fishing from the same rock. I print them in black and white at the size of a window, large enough for the small details to be read. The project began as a way of going home. It has become a record of how a place is maintained, neglected and used by the people who live along it.

Why it works: numbers (six years, twelve miles, each month) show commitment without claiming it, and the last two sentences say how the project’s meaning changed.

Ceramics and sculpture: artist statement example

I make stoneware vessels that are slightly too large to be useful. Each one is built by hand from coils, without a wheel, so the walls keep the marks of the fingers that raised them, and each is glazed with ash from the wood I burn at home. I think of them as portraits of containers. They borrow the shapes of storage jars, buckets and urns and take away the job, and what is left is the form, the weight and the evidence of how it was made.

Why it works: it is short, and the opening sentence contains the whole idea. The process details explain why the objects look the way they do.

Textiles and mixed media: artist statement example

My work begins with clothing that has been worn out and given to me: shirts, work trousers, bed linen. I take the garments apart along their seams and stitch the pieces into large wall hangings, keeping every stain, repair and faded patch visible. The sewing is slow and done entirely by hand, and a single piece can hold the fabric of twenty people. I am interested in cloth as a record of labor and care, and in what happens when private, used things are given the scale and attention usually reserved for painting.

Why it works: the source of the material is the subject, so describing the process also explains the meaning. Nothing in it needs a dictionary.

Short artist statement example (under 50 words)

I make small oil paintings of rooms just after people have left them. Working from memory, I keep the color quiet and the detail low, and ask how little a painting needs to show before a viewer begins to imagine who lives there.

Why it works: it is the painting statement above cut to two sentences, for a label, a social profile or the first line of an email. Write the long version first and cut it down.

How do you write an artist statement, step by step?

1. Describe one recent work out loud. Explain it to someone who cannot see it, and write down what you said. Spoken description is plainer than anything you would type first.
2. List how you make it. Materials, tools, sources, how long a piece takes, what you decide in advance and what you leave to chance. Circle the two or three facts that are unusual to you.
3. Answer “why this?” in one sentence. Why this subject, this material, this size. If the sentence would fit another artist’s work, it is not specific enough yet.
4. Put it in order. What, then how, then why. The first sentence should make sense with nothing else around it, because it is often the only one that gets read.
5. Cut it to 150 words. Remove anything about your childhood, your career or what viewers are supposed to feel.
6. Test it on someone outside art. Ask them to tell you what the work looks like and what it is about. Where their answer is wrong, the statement is unclear.
7. Date it and revisit it. Rewrite the statement when the work changes, and keep the old versions.

How long should an artist statement be?

Keep three lengths ready. They are the same statement, cut to fit.

When an application sets a word or character limit, treat it as a rule. Statements that run over are often cut off by the form or set aside by the reader.

What should you avoid in an artist statement?

• Borrowed theory language. Phrases such as “interrogates the liminal space between” could describe any work, so they describe none.
• Telling viewers what they will feel. Say what you did and let them respond.
• Your life story. “I have loved drawing since I was a child” is true of most artists and belongs, if anywhere, in a bio.
• Your achievements. Exhibitions, awards and collections go in the CV.
• Claims about all of human experience. “My work is about memory and identity” needs the next sentence: whose, which, shown how.
• The third person. “The artist explores” turns a statement into a press release.
• Length. If it does not fit on a phone screen without much scrolling, it is the long version.

How is an artist statement different from a bio or a CV?

Most applications ask for all three. Write the statement and the CV first, since the bio is mostly a summary of the CV with a sentence or two borrowed from the statement.

Where should your artist statement go?

Put the short version where people meet the work: at the top of your portfolio or on its own page of your website, and in a document you can attach to applications. Keep the one-liner in your email signature file and social profiles, and keep every version in one place with the date you wrote it.

ArtieDB is art inventory software and a portfolio website for working artists. The text you write in your profile appears at the top of your public portfolio, above the work, which is the natural place for a short statement. The works shown beneath it come from the same records you use to inventory your artwork, so the portfolio and your records never disagree about a title, a date or a medium.