First, let’s recap the first four mistakes from 7 Avoidable Artist Statement Mistakes: Part 1. 

Artist Statement Mistake No. 1 Giving Up The Words Around Your Art 

When people buy art, they are subconsciously (or consciously) also buying access to the artist who, by virtue of the work they do, is bestowed with a creative aura. Combining word-language with the artist’s visual language creates a sticky factor in the viewer’s mind that serves any artist well. 

Artist Statement Mistake #2: Thinking You Have To Explain Your Art  

People viewing art don’t need an explanation, they need connection. They want to be touched by the artist as they’ve been touched by the artist’s work. 

Artist Statement Mistake #3:  Using The Third Person 

First person is both honest and relatable. Third person is holding your reader at arms-length, and this creates distance instead of the closeness to you that your viewer is craving.  

Artist Statement Mistake #4: Waiting Until The Last Minute 

An effective, compelling artist statement takes time because you want the same authenticity and uniqueness to shine through that shines in your work. Also, since artist statements are often used in other venues, a looming deadline might cause you to cut corners that will make the difference between an acceptance or rejection. 

And now…let’s roll right into the seriously avoidable artist statement mistakes No.5, No.6 & No.7. 

Artist Statement Mistake #5 

Ignoring the power of an artist statement presentation 

I remember going to an open gallery event where the artist had photocopied her statement on a single 8/11.5 sheet of paper, printed out a stack as high as a glass of water, and left it on a table at the front of her studio. 

I stayed for about 45 minutes, and in that time, with a roomful of people, I saw exactly one person, stop, pick up the first copy, glance at it, then put it back on top of the stack. 

No one left with her artist statement. No one even read her artist statement. 

Is this a comment about the fruitlessness of artist statements? Or its fruitless presentation… 

Compare this to two other artist exhibits I attended: 

The first was a sculptor who wrote an artist statement for each piece he displayed.  

He printed these on gorgeous paper, with a font large enough to easily read over another person’s shoulder. He displayed these at an average eye-height, for a person standing,  and threaded the page through a thin metal post at the top, held in place by a metal base at the bottom. 

Was this extra work? You bet! But the result was two-fold. 

1. Everyone who stepped up to any one of his sculptures, first glanced at the artwork, then turned to read the statement next to it, then turned back to take a second, longer look at the piece. If they had a companion, a conversation ignited. 
2. The exhibition sold out on opening night! 

The second was a photographer who wrote a stunning statement, then blew it up to a taller-than-a-person, vertical board, an easy to read font with an attractive, but subtle frame. It was impossible to ignore. Everyone stopped to read it, then continued to look at the collection with her statement humming in the background of their minds. 

When our brains are lit up by more than one form of compelling communication, in this case visual + linguistic, the layered content becomes impossible to forget. It’s what I call the ultimate sticky effect. 

While this may be the last thing you want on your list before an exhibition, your presentation style sends out subliminal messages about you and your work.  

You don’t leave your artwork in a heap, or crammed together, or placed without thought on the wall because you understand that the way you present your work becomes a reflection on the work itself. 

Your artist statement—though smaller, percentage wise, then the sum total of your artwork—deserves the same careful attention to presentation detail you give your artwork, because it reaps the same rewards. 

When you scorn presentation details because you think these are not important or essential, you drop a valuable opportunity to establish your influence on the overall impact for how your work is viewed.  

Because all of us are shell-shocked from commercial, aesthetic bombardment, your viewers need all the help you can give them to appreciate, and remember, what you do. 

Each presentation detail builds a cumulative aura, a signature of style, which lingers around your work, whether you want it to or not.  

Disregarding details, and hoping their absence gets you off the hook, does not work. 

Absences, like silences, carry their own message, a message that is much more difficult to influence and direct than the details you tried to avoid. 

Artist Statement Mistake #6 

Thinking your artist statement is about marketing your work 

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: marketing strategies, by their very nature, are designed to be manipulative, while the power of an artist statement lies in the authenticity of its authorship.  

When you define an artist statement as a marketing ploy, it effectively undermines the sincerity needed for a convincing, compelling statement. 

We humans instinctively know when something is done with care or not. There is a resonance of the cared for that is unmistakable. We may not be able to say exactly why, or what, we are responding to, but when something is done with respect to authenticity and the spirit, respond we do. 

And, yes, after you’ve written you artist statement, then you can consider how to use it in your marketing. 

As I’ve written in my book, Chapter 3: Soul, Not For Sale: “The point of an artist statement is to be in service to your art, not the marketplace.” 

Artist Statement Mistake #7:  

Forgetting the real reason you need to write your AS  

Because it helps you expand the range of your connection with a potential buyer. More connections, the stickier your art becomes. The stickier your art becomes, the longer they remember you. 

The longer they remember you, the greater chances to sell your art. The equation is so obvious, I find it hard to understand why an artist doesn’t jump at the chance to own this space. 

Consider this one sentence from Words Can Change Your Brain by the neuroscientist Dr. Newberg and researcher Waldman. “A single word has the power to influence the expression of genes that regulate physical and emotional stress.” 

If you are an artist who feels resistance at writing an artist statement, remember this: no one tell your artist story better than you. 

 

P.S. If you want the best crash course in writing (or updating!) your artist statement, I wrote Writing the Artist Statement: Revealing the True Spirit of Your Work  to give everyone, who finds writing about themselves a chore, a simple system.  

I guide you through my writing process, one easy chapter at a time. 

Write your statement once, and you’ll have a system in place forever. 

Artist Statement Mistake No. 1 

Giving Up The Words Around Your Art  

It’s always dismayed me that artists who have resistance to the idea of an artist statement give up one of their most vital sources of power: the unique perspective only an artist can have about their work. 

Given that so many other people take liberties with words about an artist’s work – the critics, the writers, the viewers – one would think that artists would snap at the chance to stake their claim.  

Not so. For many artists, written language is fraught with land mines, and they simply prefer to hang out in the country of the Strictly Visual, or Strictly Musical, or Strictly Performing. 

When you do this, you are forgetting one of the most essential facts of the artist/buyer relationship: that for most people who buy art, the artist comes from a creative, mythical realm that feels infinitely mysterious and unattainable by ordinary mortals.  

People often buy art so they can feel closer to a creative aura that intrigues or mystifies them. They want to be touched, if just for a moment, by rare powers that only art seems to bestow. 

When you have captured the imagination of a viewer with the power of your artwork, why not use that moment to own the relationship you’ve started? 

When you also give this viewer a few potent, salient words connected to both the artwork they are looking at, and to you, the creative icon of that moment, you create a sticky factor in the very neurological framework of their brain, i.e., you make it impossible to forget you. 

And besides, why should any artist give up this rare and precious chance to use their unique language to open the door to their world even wider for their viewer? 

Artist Statement Mistake #2:  

Thinking You Have To Explain Your Art  

This mistake arises from a basic misunderstand about what the artist statement is supposed to accomplish: creating a deeper bond between the art, the artist, and the viewer. 

Besides, a lot of artists are confounded by the very idea of how to “explain” their art, which is often a deeply intuitive process that, by the nature of its visual form feels unexplainable. 

Also, explaining often includes telling the viewer what they are supposed to be seeing. And this produces the exact opposite effect of what you want an artist statement to do: pull the viewer closer, not push them away. 

People instinctively resist being “told” what they are supposed to be seeing. It feels emotionally invasive, as if our private experience isn’t right or good enough. 

And this is pretty silly. When we have experiences, these are closer to a fingerprint than to a choice of this or that. You cannot explain away an experience any more than you can explain away a person’s shoe size. 

The emotional essence of an artist statement is to give your viewer a tiny peek behind the canvas.  

What is it like for you, the artist, to be doing the work you do. In particular, what was it like to do this piece right here, in front of this viewer? 

Artist Statement Mistake #3  

Using The Third Person  

This mistake immediately labels the artist an amateur. 

It also, ironically, shows the viewer the very thing the artist is resisting: showing the depth of self-confidence they lack. 

Why is that? 

Because, the third person form is an attempt to make your artist statement sounds as if someone important is writing about you. 

In this case, the third person implies dishonesty and a lack of courage. It feels as if the artist is unwilling to be vulnerable enough to make I statements, so s/he/they hide behind the screen of maybe someone else wrote this besides me.  

Behind this urge to write in the third person are three off-base assumptions: 

• Worrying that your statement needs evaluative comments (Ripple’s sculpture excels in the lost wax technique…) 

• Worrying that your work needs authoritative commentary (Sybil Caplan’s watercolors open up a whole new direction for…) 

• Worrying that no one will take you seriously if you write about your own work. 

Hiding your authoritative “I” behind s/he/they/name sends the wrong, unconscious message to your prospective buyers: this artist lacks confidence in the authentic power of their personal truth. 

Artists, who use third person, unwitting push viewers away instead of drawing them closer.  It’s also a failure to understand how much the viewer craves a peek behind your canvass.  

First person “I” is the most direct, honest way to write your artist statement because it gives your artist statement the same authenticity and sincerity you give your artwork.  

When you write about your process as an artist, and the relationship you have to your work, you not only draw the viewer closer, you trigger an urge for them to take another, closer look at your work.  

I know because I’ve seen this happen over and over when artists know how to effectively present their statements at a show. People look at an art piece. Read a statement. Then take another, much longer look at that very same art piece. 

Authenticity, or the ability to speak to the true essence of a thing, actually creates a more powerful aura of authority than using the third person. For, after all, who better to speak about an artist’s work than the artist herself?

 

Artist Statement Mistake #4 

Waiting Until The Last Minute  

You’ve put off writing an artist statement as long as possible, but now you’re applying for a grant, a show, a residency, position in the arts, and they want one! 

What, may I ask, has been so off-putting that you’ve left this vital piece of your portfolio hanging out on the street corner until now? 

Maybe it hasn’t occurred to you, yet, that an artist statement is a necessary part of your career.  Here are the most common, 19 places that will use your artist statement. 

That’s right: nineteen! 

1. Websites 
2. Social media posts/reels  
3. Portfolios 
4. Brochures 
5. Galleries 
6. Catalogs 
7. Press releases 
8. Journalists/Writers  
9. Media articles 
10. Art festivals 
11. Craft Shows  
12. Retail Stores  
13. Contests 
14. Exhibition/performance notes 
15. Applying for grants 
16. Applying for teaching positions 
17. Applying for artist-in-residence 
18. Degree Applications 
19. Your Local Chamber of Commerce 

The sad thing is that, with a deadline looming, there is no way you’re going to come up with an artist statement that is both compelling and effective for your viewers/readers. 

The good news is, when you have an evergreen system in place, you can not only write your core artist statement, you’ll have a template for updating it when your art evolves, for standalone pieces, for commissions, or for a series. 

 

P.S. If you want the best crash course in writing (or updating!) your artist statement, I wrote Writing the Artist Statement: Revealing the True Spirit of Your Work  to give everyone, who finds writing about themselves a chore, a simple system.  

I guide you through my writing process, one easy chapter at a time. 

Write your statement once, and you’ll have a system in place forever.