Your Artist Statement and Life's Purposes

Superimposition
29.7 x 21cm 
Digital Collage of two pencil sketches
© Cherry Jeffs 2013

Why understanding your Life's Purposes can help to clarify your Artist's Statement

I've been working on my artist's statement for a long time in order to better understand where I am trying to go with my artwork and how the different strands relate to each other. 

To clarify my ideas, I've followed all the exercises out there (including my own - yeah, I guess a re-write will be in order); I've written about why I'm motivated to make the work I do, what influences me, what inspires me. I've answered potential viewer's questions about my technique and the materials I use, why I like working with them, the way I apply them, the challenges they present. Yet all the time a nagging little voice has been saying,

"You know, this is your left brain talking."

Touching the Sky
60 x 90cm
Mixed-media on MDF board 
© Cherry Jeffs 2008

Nothing wrong with that, you might say, except that my art doesn't get made with my left brain. What's more, every time my left brain tries to butt into the art-making process, I get confused and distanced from my own creative source.

So, after the last attempt at re-working my statement a few weeks ago, I let it be. Then last week, in what felt like a completely unrelated act, I turned my attention to updating my social media profiles in a bid to get them working better for me as marketing tools. This involved me writing what amounts to an elevator-length speech about who I am and why I do what I do. 

After a few rewrites, I was reasonably happy with it and began to post it on a few of my profiles, thinking that - like the artist's statement - it was probably going to require ongoing tweaking.

Then, this morning in the studio (Did I ever tell you I get all my best ideas in the studio?), my subconscious joined a whole load of dots and I realised how much getting to the heart of my artist's statement might be bound up with my Life Purpose(s). And how my Life's Purposes are what I have been trying to encapsulate in my social media profile. Namely, empowering people to transform themselves - whether creatively through my artist-empowerment mentoring or physically through teaching yoga.

Bing! It all fell into place and goes something like this…(inevitable future tweaking not withstanding.)

My work is about personal personal transformation...about the part of ourselves that is constantly reaching out of the swamp and towards the light...about our desire to grow, extend & challenge ourselves and, ultimately, fly.

I am currently exploring blending figurative and abstract imagery in the same space -  expressing the idea that for this kind of growth to be successful, it must take place on both the mundane, physical level and the conceptual, spiritual plane.

Have you been able to define your Life's Purposes? What hidden effect might they have on your creative work? Do share in the comments.

It's only a dialogue if we both talk.