On Writing a New Artist Statement

OK. It's done. It took me a long time to write.

The push came from several places: I wanted to submit “Untitled (with brushstrokes)” to a call and they needed an artist statement; I've been watching others write theirs; I took a workshop about it. And now it was finally time for me to do the same.

This isn't one of those stories where I procrastinated for three days doing a task that I think will be difficult only to do it in 15 minutes and realize it wasn't difficult after all.

No. This was actually difficult. At least it was for me.

When I first started out on this art journey, making art was something I was interested in doing for sure, but I ended up using it to heal myself from a lifetime of traumas. When I didn't need it to heal any longer, I worked on the business aspect - both as a way to sever my art from art as therapy, and as a way to infuse my art with a new purpose. But the business took away the creative ART aspect. I was spending all my time on marketing and merchandise, and the creative arts side was expiring. Not that I wasn't being creative! I was! I love “Flaminia and The Machine”! I love my ads and my newsletter and my website. They all bring me joy. But I wasn't really making ART anymore.

This was in part because I kept listening to the wrong people. Why? For the same reason I couldn't write the artist statement easily: I didn't know myself as an artist. It was a new endeavor, and as I had now changed the purpose of making art at least twice, I was now a bit lost.

I kept looking to others to define me for me. And they did define me - but for themselves: in their image of me, or the image of who I should be, or of who they would want to be if they were doing what I was doing. Mostly they defined me in terms of consumerism and materialism. Even those who liked my art were still saying to me, “But do it this way. Make something I want to see, or that I like, or that pleases me.” So, it was still for their benefit.

So, I stopped listening to them. “NO MORE,” I said to myself. I worked on the art statement for “Untitled (with brush strokes)” and then started on the artist statement for myself. I had to think for a long time. Who am I - as an artist? Why do I have a hard time defining myself? Why do I let my people bully me into being who they want me to be? I cam back to the same answer as before: with all the pressures and feeling lost in this new art experience that was taking on a new and different shape from when I first started, I lost track of who I am as an artist.

So again, I said to myself: Stop. NO MORE. And I took a couple of months to think about who I am as an artist. What do I want to do with my art? Where do I want to go with it? What do I want to say with it? Who do I want to be? And I said these things not in a punitive way as people have done to me before, but I said it in a loving way, supportive of myself, giving myself what no one else has or is able to give to me because they aren't me.

It wasn’t easy. It was exhausting. I was in my head for a long time. It looked like I wasn’t working because I wasn’t producing anything for others to see. But all that while, I was churning away inside. I was defining and redefining and learning anew who I am as an artist.

And after two months of thinking and writing, pondering and researching, I have a much clearer idea of who I am as an artist. It will change again as I grow and change, but for now, this is where I am.