Statements & Series

One thing I dreaded as a young artist was crafting an artist’s statement.  The idea of writing a succinct statement that captured all my intent as an artist absolutely overwhelmed me. Instead of answering a question about my art, or outlining my theory of art, it just generated more questions that swirled around in my brain.

Shouldn’t my work speak for itself? 

Why do I paint?

Do I have a style?

What do I hope to achieve?

Does it matter if my intent is unclear?

Do I even paint with intention?

I still struggle a bit with artist’s statements.  It is asking a lot to encapsulate your art in a brief paragraph that will help viewers relate to your artwork. It is an exercise in analysis that can feel uncomfortable, self-promoting, and unrelated to the act of making art.

As I’ve refined my interests and focused on my studio practice, writing an artist’s statement has become a little easier.  But until recently, I’ve never crafted statements specific to my different series of paintings.  This summer and fall I’ve loved having my Summer Dreams paintings all on display in once space.  As I was getting ready to install them, I decided not to post my regular artist’s statement with the work, but instead to write a statement specific to this series of paintings.

Each of my series builds off earlier work and each informs the other as I work on new paintings.  Some series are complete, like Summer Dreams, while others continue to grow. Writing a statement for Summer Dreams is inspiring me to write statements for my other series.  Visually I see links between each series, and I find myself looking forward to thinking through each theme.  One aspect of working in series that I love is being able to explore a theme deeply.  Working on a series I also find creatively freeing. I may create several paintings and after evaluating them together I find it easier to let go or rework those paintings that don’t fit the theme as well or where I’m not as pleased with the composition.  Sometimes, I find a new series emerges from a large body of work when the theme I’m focused on has subtly shifted, as with my newest series, Celestial, that has influences from both Earth Song & Spiral Dance series.

As I write series statements, I will post them here and with the series portfolios on my website.  If I’m struggling with a series statement, I may also post those struggles.  I the past I have changed series titles and even merged paintings from series together into a new series, as my work and ideas changed.  I’m curious to see if the exercise of writing series statements has a similar effect.