Artist Statement Research

For homework this week, we have to research three artist statements. By doing this, we can compare the statements which will help us when we start to write our own. I wanted to start off this post with the definition of an artist statement just to get a general idea of what is expected of them.

Artist Statement: a short statement of one page or less, written by the artist, that provides background information and influences on the artist’s body of work, overall artistic philosophy, and a brief history of the artist’s development. 
(http://www.crt.state.la.us/arts/grantglossary.aspx)


I looked through a lot of Juxtapoz Magazine online and found a couple new artists that I enjoyed.
The first artist is Iain Macarthur.

 Iain is a surreal artist from Swindon, England. He works mostly with pencil, watercolors and pigment pens. In his work, he focuses on people and creating out of the ordinary portraits. You can find a lot of his work in shirt designs, tattoo designs, posters, album art etc. You can read his entire statement here. I personally love the amount of detail that he puts into each piece. It allows the eye to find something new in the crazy designs, each time you look at it. 


The second artist I found was Timothy Pakron. 

Timothy is a visual artist from Mississippi. He uses different mediums ranging from alternative techniques in the darkroom to medium format color film photography. Timothy is known for painting with the developer in the darkroom so that only parts of his photos are exposed. As far as subject matter goes, Timothy focuses on portraiture. He believes that a portrait has a sense of presence and weight. His goal as an artist is to make the viewer see differently, think differently, and most importantly feel differently. You can read his full statement here and visit his website here. I love the emotion that comes across in his work. The facial expressions and the strokes of the developer really give portaits a whole different feel. It really makes you think about his work and what message he is trying to get across. 




The last artist that I chose is Carsten Witte.

Carsten is a photographer from Germany. He is fascinated by beauty and the beauty that the female body holds. In his statement he says" It's always faces that fascinate me and this mysterious purity of really beautiful people. He photographs the female body focusing on the natural beauty and playing around with shadow and light to create these "icons of beauty". He wants to leave his work up to interpretation of the viewer calling his images "mystery plays" where you never know exactly what is going on. A main idea behind some of his most recent work is the "belief that everything is constantly changing, but photography can preserve the moment. Beauty is almost nothing without the knowledge of how fast it will fade". You can read his entire statement here. And look at his work in Juxtapoz Magazine here. I'm in love with his portraits with the skulls overlapping. The intensity makes the photos absolutely gorgeous. They connect to my work as well, and have inspired my idea for Phase 3.