Over the past few weeks, I have been trying to write an
artist statement. This has turned out to be really difficult. I have realized
that writing truthfully about my own experiences, thoughts, and art is
challenging in ways that I did not expect. I found this to be true for my passion literacy narrative as
well. I generally think of myself as a capable writer, and I thought that both
of these tasks would be relatively easy. In the last four years that I have
spent in college, I have done a lot of writing, but most of it has been
research and analysis based, not personal. Any sort of personal exploration or
explanation that I have done for school has been verbal, and there hasn’t been
that much of it. For both my narrative essay and my artist statement, one of
the things that I was realizing was that I did not totally understand what I
wanted to say because it was something that I was trying to figure out myself.
Having these writing assignments has forced me to analyze my studio practice
and motivations for making in more depth than I was doing on my own. While it
was difficult and I think that my writings were just a starting paint for me, I
think that taking on this task helped me to start identifying patterns, and
this is something that is really useful to me. In the class for which I am
writing the artist statement, we are also doing an exercise where we interview
each other and then write an artist statement for another person based on their
interview. Though I was skeptical at first, this ended up being very helpful to
me. When I was being interviewed, the words flowed more easily because I was
not trying to make them sound right and I want over-thinking it. I think that I
learned a lot from this artist statement that was written about me, and I am
hoping that I can synthesize that, my narrative, and my old statement together
to begin creating a better statement to work off of. I think that I need to start doing more personal writing so that I flows more easily, as this ability will be important to me down the line to benefit my career. I also want to be able to write about my work in a compelling way, both for professional and personal reasons.
Mary Cate, I found this post very interesting because I also struggle with personal writing. I also have thought of myself as a capable writer after years of advance placement and honors courses but still struggle to sit down and write a story about myself. I like to hear others struggles with writing because it is interesting that after years and year of formal education, writing is still a skill that eludes a lot of people. Great blog post!
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