Stuck on writing your artist biography or About page for your website?
After deciding whether to use 1st or 3rd person, follow this simple formula to get started.
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. If you are using the 3rd person, it would look like these examples.
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). If you are using the 1st person, it might look like these sentences.
I received my BFA from . . .
I was born in . . . have lived in . . . and currently reside in . . .
Easy enough to switch those to 3rd person if you need to.
This is just a formula. It’s up to you to be more creative with your artist bio.
15 thoughts on “Formula for a 3-Paragraph Artist Bio”
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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Im concoring my fear… So here I go!!! Thanks, I need some words to follow
Alyson,
You are the first person I go to when I need some resource! thank you for sharing your wisdom!!!!!
Christine
Thanks, Christine! Was this helpful for your bio?
I am brand new to art business – recently had my first request to be part of a group show in a small gallery in a local continuing care facility. They have asked for a Bio, and I wasn’t sure of the difference between a Bio and an Artist’s Statement. Thank you for the explanation and help!
Glad it helped, Lorraine!
What about my non art life and education which took up 50 years? How best to handle that? It does have an influence on my subject matter.
And accolades- I don’t have anything significance. How do I fill that space?
Linda: You can make your bio whatever you want it to be! But do always have it come back around to the art.