cym's blog

It was the day after Germany had lost the semi-final against Spain, when we drove on the A3 motorway all the way from Duisburg to Passau. Traffic was slow in the morning rush hour before Köln. While standing almost still in the early traffic jam, I noticed the flags along the highway.

It has been a month now since I started writing for this blog. It is in the middle of July, Netherlands has just lost their most important game of the last decade and the temperatures are too high to even think about writing an artist's statement. So I will start a little summer break in my blog posts.

Now that you have written a short text about your work, you will need to think about how to present your text to the world. This step is more important than you might think. You might have spent hours and hours already until now, carefully choosing the right words to exactly describe what you are doing and why you are doing what you are doing. But the secret ingredient to really sell your work, is 'it has to look good'.

While writing the first articles for this weblog, I did some research on how to write an artist's statement. The website that shows up as the first link when you search for 'artist's statement' in google, even before the Wikipedia entry, is a website by...

Now that you know WHY you should write an artist's statement, there is still the problem of HOW to write an artist's statement. The best way to solve that problem is to just start doing it. And then, while you are writing, you will realize that you have to think everything over again.

An artist's statement is a short introduction of yourself for all those situations where you cannot be there in person to give an introduction. Think of an artist's statement as a representation of yourself for all those situations where you cannot be there yourself.

In an artist's statement you describe yourself, without explaining in detail all the things that you do. An artist's statement is a short text in which you present yourself to someone who doesn't know you (yet). An artist's statement should be short, clear and to the point. It should be easy to understand for anyone, even for those who don't know anything about art.

Nowadays artists often create works in very different fields. Many artists are not just a 'painter' or a 'sculpturer' or a 'musician' anymore. This can be difficult when you need to put together your biography. But even if all the different kinds of work that you make, seem to have little in common, there is always one important element that connects all of them together: you!

No matter in which field of art you are working, sooner or later you will be asked to send in your biography. Whenever you write an application for a project, grant, exhibition, festival, etc., organizers want your biography. And preferably, your biography should not contain more than 250 words, because people usually don't have time to read other people's biographies.

Two weeks ago I was invited to be one of the first regular bloggers on the new website of the Art Department of the University of Nova Gorica. I am not a typical blogger, but such an honour I couldn't refuse. The assignment is to write three articles a week. That doesn't sound like much, but I know that writing three articles a week on a regular basis is actually a lot of work. So here I am now, writing the first article of hopefully many to come.