Want to see the difference between
a bio and an artist statement?

Check mine out…

My Artist Statement

I grew up around the artists, writers, painters, potters, candle makers, musicians and ranchers of Big Sur. My mother was a watercolorist, my father a writer. Everywhere I looked, art surrounded me. Humans created it; deer, rattlesnakes, and black widow spiders inhabited it; the Big Sur landscape sang it out with mountains careening straight down, in fog or sunshine, into the Pacific waves that hurled themselves against stark rocks in a great chorus of ocean hosannas.

Years later I found myself in New England, with the pristine architecture of white houses, dark green shutters, and church spires in sharp contrast to the wild, cascading bluffs of Big Sur. In New England, I raised children (two daughters: one a thriving novelist, the other a dedicated painter), started and stopped a marriage, ran my own natural foods company for eleven years, then plowed through a doctorate in Human Development and Creative Studies at the University of Massachusetts in a four-year flash.

Through it all, I have written poems, short stories, essays, published over a dozen articles, a children’s book (Small Cloud), and a second book: Writing The Artist Statement: Revealing the True Spirit of Your Work

When I decided to market this book over the Internet at the turn of this century, I ended up learning so much that I found myself helping artists from all over the world.

Without meaning to, I became a career coach for visual artists. My natural inclination resonated with dozens of artists: to follow the infinite arc of connections flowing from our inner world to our creative expression, back into our inner world.

Most people go looking for a career, but mine came looking for me. As it turns out, my deepest passion – to light inspirational fires for the world – is most satisfied when your questions, problems, and conundrums ignite my creative thinking. Then I can pass the torch to you, so you can pass it onto your audience, and we all keep the creative flame alive.

Now, I end up here, with you, hoping that all I have learned to love about career and presentation strategies may serve you as well as it has served me.

May your artist statement, along with a new awareness of how to sing your art into the world, open up many fruitful connections between you and the essential, creative work that you do.

May your desire to bring your work fully into the world lead you to find the support, and the kind of savvy, hip help that every committed artist deserves.

*********************************

My Bio

Ariane Goodwin, Ph.D. holds a doctorate in Human Development and Creative Behavior from the University of Massachusetts. As a coach, writer, and creative thinker, she specializes in working with creative professionals to develop their careers and present their work with fewer struggles and more credibility.

Her writing appears online and off, in fine art, ceramic, sculpture, and surface design publications in the USA & Canada. Her seminal book for artists – Writing the Artist Statement: Revealing the True Spirit of Your Work – has been widely recommended, from the President of the Federation of Canadian Artists to the Career Center for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School, and is referenced in M.F.A. graduate thesis.

Before the Internet became a thing, Dr. Goodwin directed art programs for an urban recreation center; led drama, movement and writing workshops for children and adolescents; taught visual artists at the Loveland Academy of Fine Arts, and was a keynote speaker at national art conferences.

Then, in 2007, when telesummits were just cutting their baby teeth for other professions, Dr. Goodwin discovered that visual artists had no comparable, professional career resource. In fact, artists weren’t even accorded the courtesy of having a career, unless, toward the end of their lives, they were given a “career retrospective.”

Curious, she researched what was available and only found advice for art businesses. A year later, the smARTist Telesummit gathered a dozen expert presenters for a seven-day, online conference attended by over 400 artists from around the world and 43 US states. Surprised by the unsolicited, dozens of testimonials that poured in, Dr. Goodwin decided to make it an annual event that spanned six years.

From the telesummit, artists reached out to her for help with their careers, when they had creative roadblocks, or just needed an ally to help them see through any creative fog messing with their visions.

As a writer, coach, and creative entrepreneur, who grew up in a family of artists, Ariane understands and integrates these three, different sensibilities into a working whole.

Now, she has expanded her resources to include editing for creative entrepreneurs since any creative expression is seldom content-specific. Creativity spans multiple forms of expression and visual artists often find themselves using language to expand their creative base, or to construct a program based on their unique, artistic process or learned skill.

For more on visual artist, career resources, click here.

For more on helping creative entrepreneurs with their written projects, click here.

For more on how to keep grief, illness, and loss from derailing your art, click here.