Stuck on writing your artist biography or About page for your blog? After deciding whether to use 1st or 3rd person, follow this simple formula to get started.
©2008 Heike Seefeldt, Hope 1. Acrylic and scenic paint on canvas, 36 x 36 inches.
1st paragraph
1-2 terrific sentences from your artist statement or summarizing your statement.
2nd paragraph
Your proudest accomplishments in sentence form–not bullets–3-4 sentences max.
She has shown her work . . .
She is represented by . . .
Her work can be seen in the collections of . . .
She has received [grants, awards] . . .
3rd paragraph
Two sentences: Your education and geographical location (or history of where you’ve lived).
I received my BFA from . . .
I was born in . . . have lived in . . . and currently reside in . . .
This is just a formula. It’s up to you to be more creative with it.
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Argh! THANK YOU! Blessings…
As many times as I’ve written my bio it just never gets easier. This bare bones formula is awesome!!
Thank you for this post! I need to work on my bio, and this sounds like a great way to start.
Alyson goes into more detail about this in her book, IRBITS, and with that as guidance I composed both an Artist Statement and a bio (both on my About page) which I am proud of. Come see them at http://vener-art.com/about.html
Patricia
I think I need to revisit my Artist bio soon
The most difficult thing to do is write about yourself… Great way to start! Thank you so much, Alyson!
It seems everyone wants something different — half page, one paragraph, etc. To me the requests are for extremely short bios. What’s the point in that? I must have at least half a dozen incarnations floating around on my hard drive.
Richard: Only a half dozen? Yes, you need various versions. Just be sure to give the bios good document names: Bio-3 para.doc, Bio-100words.doc, etc. Then they’ll be easy to find. I have all of mine in a folder called Vitas.
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