Articulating the themes in your art practice is a very useful tool – both for your own development and for communication with others. We’re going to explore the ways to identify the themes in your art, how to build a Library of Conversation, describe your art in different contexts, plus I’ll share tips on how to practice speaking and writing your Artist Statement.
Claudia Kennaugh
Expert Advice on Articulating Your Art Practice
Identifying Your Themes
The work you create will be so instinctive that you often don’t think about how to describe your art practice. But embodying the subjects, people, places, and ideas that you keep coming back to is hugely affirming. All you need to do is research your own work. I find an effective way to do this is to take yourself on a walk and record yourself answering various questions. Walking oxygenates the brain, freeing up thought. Talking can be more liberating than writing, where the words can feel very ‘final’. Though if you feel more comfortable writing then you can adjust this exercise to suit you.
Here are some questions to ask. You can record yourself using the voice note app on your phone.
- What medium do I like using?
- How does that medium help me express myself?
- What is my subject matter?
- What is it about those subjects that inspires/moves me?
- How did I come to discover this subject?
- Am I telling a story?
- Is there a narrative, whether literal or hidden?
- Am I posing a question or asking something of the viewer?
- What do I hope for people to feel when they look at my work?
Library of Conversation
Now we are going to organise those thoughts into a Library of Conversation. A collection of words, phrases, and texts about your work that you can draw upon anytime. You can use this to prepare for exhibitions and to store vital wording for use in applications and your Artist Statement, which we will look at shortly. Type or hand write all of the voice recordings and cherry pick the bits that jump at you. You can always get a friend to help you edit if you’re not sure. I promise you, you will discover some gems in there that you didn’t realise you felt.
Once you start talking through the obvious practical elements you’ll get to the deeper layer and that is what is exciting to people. Plenty of artists paint landscapes but the way you express them will be entirely unique, so that’s what we want to focus on. You can take it a step further and organise the phrases and texts into categories: Process, Aesthetic, Story, and Context (e.g. exhibitions the work has been featured in). This will help you know which section of the library to draw from in different scenarios.
Describing Your Art in Different Contexts
There are various ways you will be called upon to describe your art practice. In person: with your community, collaborators, or collectors. Online: via social media posts, copywriting on your website, applications, and submissions. The context can affect our approach, which is where the categories above come in handy. The things you share with an artist friend who you may want to do a show with will be different from what you include in a funding application. You want the core message of your practice to remain the same, so the content doesn’t change, but you can be selective about what you share in those different environments. People have a short attention span and you can’t possibly share all the facets of your practice in every interaction. So think about choosing what is relevant to each scenario.
You also want to be mindful of how much you share with people. Shining a light on the themes in your art is hugely illuminating but we often want to hold the personal details back to allow people to have their own connection to the work.
Making Conversation
Speaking about your work can be very daunting, especially when we haven’t done the research above. Sometimes we might get put on the spot and suddenly not even remember our own name. It’s all about becoming familiar with the words so I suggest practising with fellow artist friends. Engage in role-playing in the different scenarios – community, collaborator, collector. We do this a lot in my workshops and it’s very effective. It helps to work through the nerves in a relaxed setting and after a few rounds you will start to feel more comfortable.
The beauty of starting the process by recording yourself speaking is that it is already as casual as conversation. The more you can make it a dialogue as opposed to a monologue the more natural and enjoyable it will feel. A good way to ease into that is to ask the other person a question, for example, “Does that resonate with you?”. Then they will lead you to the section of the library they want to hear more about.
Writing Your Artist Statement
This is a universally challenging area but often it has more to do with being shy about writing about yourself and your achievements than it is about the work. This is where it can be really helpful to separate your Artist Statement from your Biography. I often see them meshed together and it’s like singing two songs at the same time. Your biography is a factual CV of what you have done and how you got there. Whereas your Artist Statement is a personal manifesto of your intentions for your practice. This is where you want to include the themes in your art. Lift lines and phrases from your Library of Conversation and use them as building blocks to write the statement. Keep it in the first person and it will feel natural and authentic. Once you have a text you are happy with, this can be used in any application or proposal when you are asked to describe your art practice.
The way an artist sees the world is what excites the viewer. Articulating the themes in your art can help you express that unique perspective – the magic ingredient to your work.
Further Reading
How to Write an Artist Biography, Artist Statement, and Artwork Description
Art Fair Checklist for Artists
The Relationship Between the Artist and Their Materials
Expert Advice on Selling Your Artwork
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