Note after reading,"Teaching Statement as Self-Portrait by Mary Anne Lewis.

Note after reading,"Teaching Statement as Self-Portrait by Mary Anne Lewis.

Writing an artist statement is an opportunity to communicate the heart of your creative practice to your audience. It's essential to be authentic, concise, and engaging in your writing, ensuring that it complements and enhances the experience of viewing your art.

But what if you were an artist and were asked right now to write a statement that would be authentic, appealing, and above all else, one that conveyed the message you wanted to tell and that would represent you? Writing such a statement will be a very difficult task. And the problem is that if you write with such a serious and dense intention, the message may not be sent confortably. This statement will definitely cringe when you read it later.

​In this sense, the article above provides a clear path on how to write your own statement as an artist, or art educator.

​I think the key point is in the following sentence in the article above:

More specifically, I began to remember those moments of discovery that had prompted me to pursue graduate studies in the first place.
My statement became more concrete and evocative. I was showing, rather than telling.
Something I had become so convinced of through my own teaching of literature--namely the primacy of close examination of textual subtleties--was simply not coming through in my statement. It was prescriptive rather than descriptive, full of jargon and lacking in detail and precision. There was no suspense, no moment, no real sense of me as a teacher. Clearly I had to rethink my approach. There was no suspense, no moment, no real sense of me as a teacher.
I’ll end, then, with this advice: As you work and rework, crafting and finessing your self-portrait in teaching, I hope you can take time to remember, in glorious detail, a moment or two in your teaching.

From that moment, and all it stood for, my portrait moved to a more general description of my teaching background, experiences, preparation, and methodology.

​In other words, you can see that a statement is not about showing something sensuously, but about describing and explaining yourself and your art world in more detail. This sounds more like stating invisible things, such as your philosophy, journey, career, passion, etc., as if they were visible.

​However, in order to explain your art world or educational outlook in detail, I think you need to be honest about yourself, as if you were drawing a detailed portrait. To achieve this, the author tells us to recall our minds from the beginning and face our past selves through reminiscence. We are also asking you to create a statement as if you were creating a piece of art by adding specific details to it. Surely if I write like this, people will know more about me and my statement.