You have the work. Twenty images, arranged on a page that finally looks right. Then there's the empty box marked "Artist's statement", and it has been empty for three weeks.

Most artists can talk about their work for an hour and freeze when asked to compress it into 150 words. The difficulty is rarely the writing itself. It's the belief that a statement has to sound like art writing — that it needs a certain weight, a certain vocabulary, before anyone will take it seriously. It doesn't. It needs to sound like you, explaining something you care about to someone who is genuinely interested.

Work out what the statement is actually for

The images do most of the work. The statement does one job: it gives a viewer a way in, and it tells them something the pictures can't. It is not a defence of your choices, not a theory of your practice, and not a test you can fail.

Picture the reader. Someone has clicked through from a link, liked two pieces and is scrolling. They'll give you twenty seconds. A statement written for that person is short, concrete, and reads like speech. A statement written to impress a imagined panel of academics is usually longer, vaguer, and forgettable.

Start with the work, not with the theory

Before you write a sentence, describe three pieces out loud. Record yourself, or just talk to the wall. Say what you made, what it's made of, what you were thinking about, what you almost did instead. Two minutes per piece is plenty. Don't perform.

Play it back and write down the phrases you used without thinking. "I wanted it to feel like the inside of a cupboard." "The blue kept failing, so I stopped fighting it." "It's about my grandmother's kitchen, but not in a sad way." Those sentences are your raw material, and they're already in your voice, because they came out of your mouth.

Statements go wrong when they're written from the outside in — you imagine what a curator wants and reverse-engineer a tone. They work when they're edited down from something you actually said.

Prompts that get you past the blank page

Answer these quickly, in full sentences, without editing. Ten minutes, no backspacing.

• What was I looking at, reading or thinking about when this series started?
• Which material decision did I make, and why that one?
• What question does the work keep asking, even if I haven't answered it?
• What do people usually notice first — and what do they miss?
• What did I try before this that didn't work?
• Which piece is the odd one out, and why did I keep it?
• What would I say if someone asked me about this at a private view, drink in hand?

You won't use most of it. Two or three answers will contain the spine of the whole statement, and you'll know which ones when you read them back.

Cut the jargon before you cut anything else

Jargon is usually a way of avoiding a specific claim. It sounds careful while saying very little. A few swaps do most of the work:

• Interrogates becomes "asks" or "tests".
• Utilising becomes "using" — or better, "I found them on a beach".
• My practice usually becomes "my work", at least in the opening paragraph. "Practice" is fine in a sentence such as "my printmaking practice has shifted"; at the start it reads like an announcement.
• Engages with notions of can almost always go entirely.
• Vibrant, dynamic, evocative, unique — if the work is those things, the viewer can see it for themselves. If it isn't, the word won't help.

One test covers most of this: if you wouldn't say the sentence aloud to another person, cut it or rewrite it until you would.

Give the draft a shape

Open with something specific

"I am a multidisciplinary artist based in Leeds" is a directory entry, not an opening. It gives the reader nothing to picture. Try an image, a material or a decision: "The paintings start with a walk and end up somewhere I didn't plan." You can put your location and medium in the second sentence, where they belong.

Say what you actually make

Name materials. Mention scale. Say how the thing is made and roughly how long it takes. If you work in series, explain what holds a series together. A reader who has never seen your work should be able to picture the room it's in.

Keep one idea, not four

Most first drafts contain three or four themes. Choose the one the work is genuinely about and let the others support it. A statement that says one thing clearly is far more persuasive than one that gestures at five.

End without a summary

Don't restate what you've just said. Finish on a detail, an open question, or what you're working on now. "I'm currently trying to make the same shape in glass" is a better last line than any sentence beginning "My work seeks to...".

Before and after

Here is a typical first draft:

My practice interrogates the liminal boundary between memory and materiality, utilising found objects to explore notions of impermanence and loss.

And here is the same idea, said plainly:

I make small sculptures from things I find on walks: a hinge, a broken tile, a length of blue rope. They're about what we keep and what we throw away. Nothing in them is precious, which is the point.

The second one is longer, more specific, and sounds like a person. It also tells you more about the work. That trade — fewer abstractions, more detail — is the whole edit.

Test it in the place it will live

Read it aloud. Every stumble marks a sentence to rewrite. Then read it next to your images on an actual screen, not in a document. The statement sits beneath the work, and the two have to agree in tone. A playful body of work under a solemn statement reads as a mismatch, and viewers notice that faster than they notice anything else.

On length: 100 to 200 words suits most portfolio pages. Applications and exhibitions often ask for more, so keep a longer version in a notes file and cut down from it rather than starting again each time. Some galleries ask for a third-person bio. Write one if they ask, but keep the statement itself in the first person — "She explores..." is a different document doing a different job.

Finally, show it to someone who knows you well and ask one question: does this sound like me? If they hesitate, it doesn't yet. Ask which sentence felt wrong, and start your edit there.

A practical plan: one draft, twenty minutes

1. Talk through three pieces out loud and note the phrases you used.
2. Write a rough draft in one sitting, aiming for about 250 words. Don't edit as you go.
3. Leave it overnight.
4. Read it aloud and cut every sentence you wouldn't say to a real person.
5. Replace each abstraction with something concrete: a material, a place, a moment.
6. Delete the first sentence and see whether the draft is stronger without it. First sentences are often just throat-clearing.
7. Ask one person to read it, then publish.

Revisit it twice a year, or whenever the work changes direction. A statement isn't a monument; it's a caption for a body of work that's still moving. Write it quickly, cut it hard, and let it sound like you. That's the version people will remember.

Photo: mylns65hoasphn / Pixabay