How to craft a professional artist biography and avoid common mistakes
While it’s crucial to have a concise and informative artist statement ready for your potential clients, curators, and press contacts, I believe that it’s also important to write a separate artist biography. Wait, what’s the difference? A statement should focus on your art and discuss your process, inspiration, subject, or techniques, or a combination of those elements and anything else that is unique to your artwork. The bio, on the other hand, gives you the opportunity to talk about your educational background, awards and honors you’ve received, the most recent shows you’ve exhibited in, and you can also mention where you were born or where you currently reside. Although I suggest writing a bio and statement separately, I have also seen artists successfully combine them. If you’re going to go that route, make sure that the sections about your life and career are in separate paragraphs from where you talk about your art so that it is not confusing to anyone reading it.
Why Write a Biography?
First and foremost, people love to learn about the creative person behind the artwork they find interesting, eye-catching, or unique! It’s great to hear about the artist’s inspiration and process, but especially in a time of social distancing, we all crave human connection too. Help break down long-held stereotypes about artists by sharing your story and use this as a way to further engage with your audience. When artists do this, they build relationships that can help eventually turn fans into paying clients.
From a different perspective, it’s also especially useful if you are pitching your art for media features. Providing the blog, publication, or other media outlet you want to be featured by information about yourself in addition to your art allows them to put together a more compelling story for their audience. Doing so assists them with finding the right angle for presenting your work in a way that their readers will connect with it, which is a win for both sides. Along a similar vein, galleries like to have information about you to share with potential clients and definitely when they’re initially reviewing you to see if you’re a fit. Take the opportunity to show off your best recent accomplishments and prove that you belong in their roster!
Get Started
Just like with an artist statement, you don’t have to overthink it. Write a first draft, come back to it with fresh eyes after a few hours or the next day, and when you have a finalized version, make sure to ask a friend or colleague to look it over for spelling, grammar, and content edits. I mentioned a few ideas for what to include earlier, here are several more examples:
Where you were born or grew up, if that is important to you and your work
Some artists mention when they were born as well, but that is completely up to you
Your cultural background, again, if this is significant for you and your work (otherwise optional)
What kind of artist you are (i.e. painter, mixed media installation artist, ceramicist)
You can talk a bit about the work you produce, but keep it to one or two sentences at most
Any degrees or certificates you have earned and schools attended, self-taught artists can mention being self-taught
One to three recent exhibitions and ideally focus on solo, duo, or juried shows
Mention your most prestigious awards, grants, honors, invited artist talks, etc
If you’ve been on an artist residency, you can name that
A few recent media features: magazines, blogs, podcasts, etc
Prominent collections, think museums and institutions *not* your private clients
Where you live and work, if you choose to share that information
You don’t have to include all of these items, this is simply meant to be a guide. Pick and choose what is most relevant to you. It’s your artist bio after all!
Tips to Keep You on Track
1. Keep it short
Reading the above list, it sounds like a lot of information and that you might have to end up writing a full page for your biography, but that shouldn’t be the case unless you are very far along in your career. For most artists, one paragraph or two should certainly suffice.
2. Don’t copy your statement
Your artist biography isn’t a shorter version of your statement as mentioned previously. I have seen many artists who write basically the same information in both and this is a missed opportunity. If you notice this in your current artist bio, see the above list of ideas for content and make edits accordingly.
3. But do look at other artist bios!
Check out the websites of artists you admire and look at how they write their biography. Look at those who are further ahead in their career than you are to see how you can level up!
4. TMI
I tend to enjoy reading biographies that share an interesting and personal fact about the artist. Perhaps they mention something about their family, a beloved pet, a special hobby, or that they always have to be listening to a certain type of music in the studio. That said, some artist bios share way too much personal information and the result is that it reads as informal and unprofessional. Remember that your bio can be an integral part of making a first impression on a potential client or future gallery partner. Always aim to put your best foot forward!
If you’re unsure, I’d stick to the basics and leave out anything you’re questioning. Purely focusing on your art career rather than your personal life is fine. In fact, I have read artist bios that spend so much time talking about non-art related information that it becomes distracting.
5. Stay objective
Another common reason an artist bio might not sound professional is when it is written with subjective language. I would generally recommend staying away from words like only, best, most, etc. For example, I’ve seen artists try to claim being the “best” artist creating X in their geographic area or medium and to put it simply, it’s tacky.
6. The one thing everyone says...that they really don’t need to
I’m not sure where artists picked up this trend, but way too many have fallen into the habit of writing something along the lines of “my art is in numerous private collections around the world.” You might think this gives off the impression of being a bestselling international artist, but it’s become such a trite statement in artist biographies that ultimately it doesn’t say anything significant at all. There are so many artists who can claim that they have buyers outside of their home country these days. Instead, use that space in your bio to say something more exciting and insightful that is specific to you!
You can, of course, make an exception if your work has been acquired by a museum, institution, or other notable public or private collection, but only mention a private collection if the client is okay with it and if it is a commonly recognized one. Do not list the names of your customers in your bio or resume. I’ve seen this happen way too often!
Now that you’ve got all of the tools to craft your perfect artist biography, get to it! Thanks for reading and I hope you found this article helpful.
Cheers!
Alicia Puig
CEO & Co-founder of PxP Contemporary
