Post your Artist's Bio Here!

Brian,

Since you have asked for an example of an artist's bio, here's something that I would write if I thought the concept were valid.

Graeme Hird is one of the world’s finest landscape photographers, capturing the beauty of the unique landforms he studies.

Graeme has a university degree in Applied Geology and has worked as a geologist for the last 13 years, although he developed his photographic skills after leaving university. He is entirely self-educated in the field of photography. An appreciation for the visual grandeur of the world he sees has inspired his unique photographic vision. His love of the natural world and its wonders is derived from his deep understanding of the processes that formed the land as we see it today.

His mission in life is to share the beauty he sees with all who interact with his art.

Graeme believes that for a body of artistic work to be successful, the artist must have an abiding love the subject he/she chooses to depict. His love of nature's beauty becomes immediately apparent when his work is viewed for the first time. Exquisite details and colour are revealed in all his finely crafted prints.

The name of Graeme Hird should be remembered: he is destined to become one of the world’s most collectable artists.

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Like most bios, it's all true, but it's also full of that resource I talked of earlier. To the average person (my market demographic) it would come across as pompous and pretentious. To other artists, it's like a thousand others they've read before. So if I show this to anybody who might care, I'll alienate my main market and show myself as a complete fool to the cognoscenti in the art world. Either way I lose ....

It's much better for me to just shut-up and let my photography do the talking. Your mileage may vary with the quality of your art and the credibility of your bio. Feel free to use mine as an example of what not to do.

Good luck with it,

The best bio is one written by someone famous who is not you. Or someone imaginary, like the one on my friend Bee's site (and no Brian M, this is not the same "Bee" as "Bee's Photography" over on the Alameda).

How about this one from my friend Sean, who was on Luminous Landscape this past week reviewing the Epson RD-1:

Sean Reid, an American, has been a commercial and fine art photographer for twenty years. He studied under Stephen Shore and Ben Lifson and met occasionally with Helen Levitt. In the late 1980s he worked as an exhibition printer for Wendy Ewald and other fine art photographers. In 1989, he was awarded an artist-in-residence grant from the Irish Arts Council in Dublin, Ireland. His commercial work is primarily of architecture and his personal work is primarily of people in public places. Having worked mostly with large format and rangefinder cameras for many years he now works primarily with Canon DSLRs. In addition to being a photographer, Reid is also the founder and owner of Northeastern Motorcar Tours and Northeastern Motorcycle Tours both based in Saxtons River, Vermont in the USA.

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Hi Folks

I think a Bio is important in some situations where ones work is hanging in a public venue.
For example, at our gallery we have a sampling of 5 different photographers, the show consists of 7 images from each, 4 of the 5 photographers work is quite self evident to the viewer. One though is raising a bit of row, because he has included images of christ and madonna in various unflattering elements.
We opened the show without an artist statement required, and very quickly asked this paticular photographer to submit one.The statement helped the viewer understand where he was going with his imagery.
Rarely would I think a statement was necessary with ones work, but in this instance I see the value

blansky said:

One doesn't write in the first person because it sounds like bragging. One writes in the third person so it looks like one actually has friends.

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Hmmmm. While I agree about the bragging part, I always thought they were written in the third person so as to give the (usually mistaken) impression the person is successful enough to afford a publicist.

Personally, I dislike the typical flowery, pretentious bio/artiste's statements, although I recognize that style may have some appeal in certain circles. But, I find straight, factual background information useful in assessing a person's training, experience, and such. The key purpose, I believe, is to give the reader some reason for trusting your capability and a reason for going to the trouble of trying to figure out what your work is "saying".

I inquired here on APUG about writting an artists bio etc. and came up with this.....

http://www.scootermagruder.com/contact.html

Here's mine-it's already been tested in action and bits have appeared in B&W uk (april 02 and june 03)-writing it was reasonably painless in the end.Keeping it short and sweet is good-like Edward Weston's
(" discovery excites me to focus"... etc).

Northing



This work is about experiencing the northern landscape and its special quality of light. It was partly inspired by Wordsworth's poetry and 'Arctic Dreams' by Barry Lopez (a wonderfully inspiring book about imagination and discovery in a northern landscape). I'm also interested in exploring unfamiliar landscapes that totally contrast with the Wiltshire and Dorset landscapes that I'm familiar with. the endless everchanging skies and dark frowning crags of northern Scotland. You step out of your front door with a camera and you can find yourself swept away on a journey that can take you anywhere you can imagine. When you get to the northernmost parts of Scotland you're closer to Scandinavia than to London and there's largely empty space between you and the Arctic- I love the elemental quality of these landscapes. When the roars of the stags echo in the glens then you could be in some other world or time listening to the calls of strange and mysterious monsters.

My work is my "Artists Statement."

My bio: "Born in Beverly Massachusetts some years ago. Fascinated, enraptured, and obsessed by the beauty in this world ever since."

To me, anything additional would either be redundant or irrelevant.