Archive: Workshop your Artist Statement!

[Deleted User]

Hi Terrill, I love your artist’s statement. It instantly connected me to your work and I love the sensory nature of it all. Thank you for sharing!

[tawelch]

Thank you Lily and you are most welcome. I am pleased that it worked for you.

[mijwallace]

 

Hello there, I’m Mark Wallace, a digital landscape artist from Hertfordshire in England. I have been painting constantly for over four years and work on a smartphone or tablet using several apps which simulate real painting and drawing techniques. I love working on computers and want my art to reflect that aspect of myself.  I’ve worked in a number of ways to create my art and one my favourites is to simply let the paint decide what direction the piece is going to take. This sounds like a haphazard way of creating art, but I truely feel it allows aspects of my subconscious to emerge which would otherwise remain subdued by using a more representational approach.

Fingerpainting on a three inch screen means it can be challenging to get the right result in a piece, and a large scale print of the work is significantly more impactful than what I see when working on the tiny screen. When I start a painting using this approach I select the tube tool, choose the colours and squish the paint out onto the canvas. I then grab the palette knife and work the colours together until I’ve smoothed the paint down to a textured finish. I step back and see what the paint has to say, and it usually tells me what the piece is going to be, I start working close in on the detail of the focal point in the painting adding objects or people to give it a narrative and get the viewer asking questions like, what is going on in the scene? Who is that person, what are they doing there? What is the mysterious shape in the distance? Is there danger? What will happen next? In more abstract pieces I try to ask visual questions and let the viewer interpret what they see, it’s fascinating to hear feedback wildly different from the ideas I have on these pieces.

[Crista Cloutier]

Mark, I’m not sure how to give feedback on your statement. It’s not reading as a statement yet. There’s a lot of HOW you make work, which loses your reader in the techinicalities.

I am yearning for more WHY you make art.

I want you to write something that makes me want to look at your work right away.

I urge you to study some of the other statements for inspiration. And then, yes, that’s right, start writing again. You can do this! You’re not that far off! But I believe it can be better.