Artist Statement Brainstorming
Communications 6N1950
These questions are here to help you gather your thoughts before writing your artist statement. There are no wrong answers, and you do not need to use everything you write here. The goal is simply to get words on the page. Your statement does not need to sound grand or important. It is an invitation for someone to connect with you and your work—and that can be a quiet, honest, small thing.
The Physical and the Mechanical
What materials do you work with? What draws you to them—their texture, behaviour, history, or something else?
What do you enjoy about the physical act of making? Is there a particular motion, rhythm, or moment in the process that you find satisfying?
What does your body do when you work? Do you stand, sit, move around? What do your hands know how to do?
The Thinking and the Feeling
What do you find yourself thinking about while you work? Does your mind wander, focus, or empty out?
What questions or ideas keep returning in your practice? Are there themes you circle back to?
What does making give you that other activities do not? Why do you keep doing it?
The Visible and the Invisible
What do you hope someone notices when they look at your work? What would you want them to see or feel?
What is present in your work that might not be obvious at first glance—a backstory, an influence, a choice that shaped the outcome?
Who or what has shaped how you think about making? This might be a person, a place, another artist, or something else entirely.
Your Upcoming Exhibition Work
Think about the pieces you are preparing for the February exhibition.
What are you making? Describe the work briefly—its form, materials, scale.
What prompted you to make these particular pieces? Was there a starting point, question, or impulse?
Is there anything you want viewers to know that they would not see at first glance?
A note: Your first draft will be imperfect, and that is exactly as it should be. The revision process is where the real work happens. For now, just write something down. You can shape it later.
