The Artist Statement

     Writing an artist's statement can be intimidating because of the task of summing up all of your work in such a logical and linear manner. This can especially be hard if your work is all over the map or is complex in other forms that cannot be easily discussed or labeled in a written statement. The first thing I did when I learned I needed to write an artist statement was Google the term, unsurprisingly I found little help because of the personal nature of the statement and the fact that it seems you could be the best artist in the world but you would still have a hard time writing this. I attribute this to the fact that artists are just that, they create art and then they (we?) figure that if anyone wants to understand their art they can just have a look themselves and come to their own conclusion, in this sense a statement is almost the antithesis to art.
     Seeing as we have to do it though for the sake of the IB program, I suppose a few pointers would be well received. First of all, look at what you have done by laying all your pieces out in front of you. If you actually have them in front of you when you begin to write you will be able to easily pick out patterns, themes, and motifs behind your work. Try and culminate this themes onto a piece of paper - in doing so make sure the words you choose are delicious and euphonious in nature (these help to provide the dimension that is usually lacking in a statement but present in art). After this try and organize this words into a paragraph; where you proceed to use them to describe your art as well as why and how you did it (remember, IB is big on the rationale behind your work). Because there is a 300 word limit on the statement, make sure you focus on pieces and mediums that you really enjoyed working with. Try to include connections to artists or movements that inspired you, involving the global aspect that IB seems to enjoy so much. Once this is written then turn to the future, explain what you hope to do to continue your art past the confines of IB - but don't fail to connect back to what you've discussed earlier.
      Try to get this done over the course of a couple of days; while it may be short amount of words to write, as with anything written if you give yourself time to reflect it will get infinitely better because you'll pick up on things you missed and give yourself some time to breathe and develop new thoughts. Below is my piece of art for this post, a favorite of mine by the Austrian artist Egon Schiele.