Artist Statement Workshop

On Thursday, I attended an artist statement workshop to work on one of the writing outcomes for ADAS on the Artifact project.

I hate writing about my work. I could talk about my work all day long, but it becomes a little disorganized because I can grasp at so many different words and descriptions. Writing forces you to pick and choose and to be precise yet descriptive with these intentions.

We did an exercise by which we broke our work down into a couple of specific elements and questions, which really helped. I am a little conflicted as to who I am as an artist because I have this practice of cartooning, which I haven’t really incorporated into my work in the Graduate Diploma thus far, but which I consider to be central to my identity as an illustrator. However, talking to peers about this concern really helped me to organize my thoughts around creating joyful experiences in illustration and unearthing intersections between words and visuals.

We also found a list of action words that will help us to organize our actions and description of our practice in relation to key ideas rather than just methodology.

Finally we ended with some questions and artist statement examples, which helped to make us further consider where we want our work to go, and it helped to see examples from other practicing artists in relationship to their work to situate how they see their work and context.

I think I now have a clearer idea of where I will be going with this artist statement, but now I just have to write it.