Wednesday 13th November 2013
One of the most dreaded aspects of preparing a portfolio and setting up your Gallereo page for many artists is when it finally comes time to write your artist bio page. As many visual artists aren't nearly as comfortable with the written word as they are their own medium of choice, it can become a daunting proposition, and many artists wind up selling themselves short with either a poorly-written bio or simply not including information that people find interesting. Fortunately, we're here to give you some tips and pointers that will help ensure that your bio page shines just as much as your favourite masterpiece.
First of all, let's go over the typical and boring factual stuff. Now before you all groan, there's a good reason that this stuff is typical - people tend to want to know it, and they may even wonder at your reasoning if you decide not to include it. This includes things like any formal art school training you've had, how many years you've been working in your chosen medium, any gallery shows you may have had, awards you've won, and juried competitions you've won.
However, as any good artist knows, the most technically-excellent work is worthless if it doesn't have any flair or style that makes it appealing. Savour is what makes life worth living, and since this bio is all about your artistic life, you'll be doing yourself a disservice if you don't include some. Tell us about your inspirations, your passions, and what makes you do the things you do the way you do them, but do it in a way that's uniquely your own. Humanise your story. It will make you seem far more real to your potential buyers than a bulleted list of your education and accomplishments.
The crucial point to remember is that people aren't likely to want to read an entire essay about your artistic life (at least, not at this stage in your career). If you're inspired enough to write something in a long format, then by all means do so, but host it on a separate page and link to it from your bio page so that readers who want to dig deeper can, but those who just want the highlights don't have to read everything that ever happened to your artistic life.
This is where the crucial balance comes in - you have to entice your readers, hint at your motivations, draw a sketch of who you are - save the photorealistic oil painting of your life for another place and time.
Posted on November 13th 2013 on 04:09am
