Week 3

This week I decided to take a look at the hand out that was given to us – the one that helps us make a POT STEW. I found it helpful at times, but when the metaphorical analogies took place it kept throwing me off course and I ended up having to re-read what I hand just read to understand it fully. This was hardly time efficient and soon became because I really wanted to rework what I had so far of my artist’s statement and make it better but the more of the analogies that took place the more unsure I became about what I had already written – course once I re-read it again it became a little more clear. I looked again online to see if I could find a short artists statement which may give me some insight as to what topics to cover and what to leave out.

After some time I ended up looking closely at the statements of four artists, Christy Honigman, David Harrison Wright, Jessie Brennan and finally my favourite by far Moin Shah. I like the one by Moin Shah simply due to its simplicity, clarity and because it’s straight to the point.

“I Love every bit of art work that I do and am happy in it as each painting elevates the other. The best compliment I get is when these are accepted and appreciated and are a positive addition to this world.

Over the years I have developed my personal and unique style. My work has unusual colour selections creating figurative and other art forms giving my paintings a unique touch and aura much liked. I find expressing myself in the expressionist style very meaningful.

I am self-taught. In 1997 I started painting in this style. I haven't consciously or unconsciously adopted the style of any other artist... this gives my work a freshness, which is appreciated by collectors of my paintings.

My medium is acrylic and I have my own mixing and application techniques to enrich and produce multi layers and a sense of depth or a 3-D effect. I normally use paper but also like to paint on canvas or other material. I find that I am at my best when there is music in the air.”

I personally thought each of their statements were flawless and noticed that neither followed any of the handout guidance notes in an y shape or form.

So I went back online to see if I could find a set of questions or phrases that I could answer in order to help me progress. After much searching I found a few sources and a select few questions which I believed would help me if answered.

- How long should an Artist’s Statement be?
- What should an artists statement say?
- Can an Artist’s Statement change?
- Why do you create art and what does it mean to you?
- How does the creation of art make you feel? What emotions do you wish to convey?
- If the statement refers to a specific piece, why did you choose to represent this piece in this way?
- What do you call the piece and why? What materials did you use? What are the dimensions of the piece?
- What inspires you? How are your inspirations expressed in your work?
- What message are you trying to convey to the viewer?
- How much time is spent creating your pieces?
- How is your work a reflection of you?
- What artists (living or dead) have influenced you?
- What is your vision/philosophy?
- What are your goals for the future?
- What are your techniques and style and how do these relate to the medium?
- How do your techniques and style relate to your vision/philosophy?

I found these to help me a little more than the metaphorical guide that was handed out to us. This is because these questions were more direct and clearer without including any background metaphors or stories to help understand it. Their simplicity helped me generate sentences and also which subjects I could discuss in each paragraph. After answering a few of these questions I decided to edit my first paragraph and add a few of these sentences. I also changed which topics to discuss in the first paragraph.


Bibliography

1. Christy Honigman
http://www.mizelmuseum.org/artist_statement.html

2. David Harrison Wright
http://www.davidharrisonwright.com/about-the-artist.html

3. Jessie Brennan
http://www.jessiebrennan.co.uk/biography.html

4. Moin Shah
http://www.artquotes.net/artists/shah_bio.htm

5. Artist’s Statement Help
http://www.ebsqart.com/ArtMagazine/za_400.htm
http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/Files/portfolio2.htm
http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/Files/portfolio2.htm
http://www.artbusiness.com/artstate.html
http://www.nitaleland.com/articles/statement.htm

Week 2

During this workshop we were given some pointers on how to create a flawless artists statement. The pointers we were given were to be used as the base of our statement – to get our ball rolling. After much debating with myself over which point to write from I finally settled on writing from a Digital Artist’s perspective. I think it was simply because I felt more comfortable from this point and also more at home when writing from this perspective. From the advice that was given to us I have begun to tailor it to me my own perspective. I have already formulated my first paragraph but am finding it difficult to move on.

The body of the second paragraph which I have written does not have the same rhythm as I would like it to have. It doesn’t seem to flow in from the first paragraph and actually seems a bit outlandish from what the vision which I have it to be. In order to counter this I took advice from the Module Study Guide and wrote an artist statement about another inspiring artist – Banksy. This helped a little, but I need more inspiration. So I went in search online to see if I could find some artist statements of any famous artists which may give me some insight as to how they structured theirs and what topics they discussed.

"These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. "

From the above extract by Edward Burtynsky we can see that statements do not have to be written totally based on ourselves but can also be aimed at one of our pieces of works. Although these type of statements are usually shorter they are more complicated to put together because they have to impact the reader within the first five seconds of them reading it, else they would soon lose interest and most likely not finish the statement.

In the workshop this week we were all introduced to a game where each student was required to list good and bad traits about themselves. Many listed qualities which reflected on what kind of personality they had, this gave the impression that they were applying for an interview of some sort. We were prompted that this was not the most efficient method in completing the task and that in order to carry it out the most efficient way required us to see ourselves as young establishing artists preparing a biography.

I think some of the words which I listed for myself in this session helped write some more of my artist’s statement.

Bibliography

1. Edward Burtynsky
http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/Sections/Statement_CV/Statement.htm

2. Silver Lake Operations #1, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia 2007
http://www.flowerseast.com/Originals_Exhibitions_Large.asp?Exhibition=09BURTYNSK&OL=5

Week 1

In the first lesson of this module we all were basically introduced to the module, we focused on what was required of us to pass this module and what our learning outcomes were to be. From what I have understood so far, this module aims to prepare us budding artists to enter the huge art industry.

We have already been set our first assignment which is to construct an Artist’s Statement. The content of this statement contains information on what makes each individual art student tick, what our goals are and also what inspires us. This will help not only us but our prospective viewers understand us and our artwork better. We have already been given a choice of how we may wish to approach our statements, they are the following:

1. Art – submit an application for residency or a piece of artwork for a competition
2. Curator
3. Designer / Freelancer
4. Entrepreneur – submit a concept to Speed/West Focus/Bright Ideas
5. Video Production – submit a video to a film festival or a funds pitch

I am currently favouring on writing my artists statement from either the Art, Designer/Freelance or the Video Production point of view. I have chosen art because I am currently preparing an art piece for an online Wacom competition and could possibly make use of that as my competition submission. Plus I am quite passionate when I start writing about art so I don’t think I’ll short when I am writing about it. I’ve also chosen Designer/Freelance because I have recently began to work as a freelancer online and would like to write about my experience of it and think I would feel pretty comfortable in stating my feelings on this subject. Finally I have also chosen video production because I have recently begun to make videos for personal projects and have began to digitally enhance them. I also think this will give me an opportunity to incorporate another one of the options with this one for me to experiment with.

The second assignment that we have been set is to create a portfolio which will work in combination and possibly enhance our artist’s statement. I don’t think I will have too much of a problem with this assignment. I do a lot of graphical work and I already have numerous concepts in mind. At the moment I have concepts of creating my portfolio digitally and having it hosted on my own domain name, but if I do for some reason go against this option then shouldn’t think that crating a hard copy portfolio on paper should be very much harder.