Don't Panic!

The scenario: you’ve got a show coming up and the venue asks for an artist bio. You haven’t written a paragraph since senior year of high school. Alternatively, you don’t like to talk about yourself, and that’s valid too. Rather than give up and hope the venue doesn’t notice you didn’t fill in that request, let’s see if a back-to-basics crash course helps out.

Start with a simple brainstorm session. Ask yourself the five basic questions of journalism:

• Who?
• What?
• How?
• Where?
• When?

Artist bios are generally written in the third person, so think about this as interviewing yourself. This is the easiest to figure out what’s important to get your point across. 

Who Are You?

Do you go by your legal name when presenting your art or do you lead off with a professional nom de plume? 

Example: professionally I sign my works “A.K. Cyrway”, but I go by Ames.

What is your profession and/or discipline?

What type of art do you do? Do you use “artist” for what you do, or are you a sculptor, a photographer, an artisan, an illustrator? Is there a focus to your work? 

Example: I consider myself an illustrator, and my primary subject matter is science fiction.

How do you create your art?

Do you use your mediums traditionally? Are you experimental? Is there a medium you focus on? 

Example: While I use watercolors, pastels, and acrylics, my favorite mediums are pen and ink, color marker and pencil, and digital illustrator.

Where did you learn your trade, or where was your best display?

This gives credibility to your bio, no matter how trivial you think your background or accomplishment may be. 

Example: Outside of my high school courses, I’m primarily self-taught; I took after school and adult lessons from two local artists, Peggy Stowers and Pat Binette. One of my proudest achievements was having artwork published for the Transformers Collectors’ Club series.

When did you start creating art?

This can be when you began focusing on your career as an artist, or it could be when you fell in love with creating. 

Example: I started off by copying the art from my comic books when I was a kid, until I was able to draw the characters without references. From there I began to design my own characters and backgrounds.

Conclusion: the Finishing Touches

Adding a little bit about yourself outside of your art adds a human spin to matters. How do you spend time when you’re not working on art?

Example: I’ve been a specialty custom picture framer since 2000, my background is in graphic communications and information technology, I live in Waterville with my husband and fellow artist Brian Vigue and our menagerie of fish and cats; I collect Transformers, and I enjoy playing both table-top and online role-playing games.

Now it’s time to bring it all together; use a highlighter or underline to emphasize the parts you feel stuck out the most. In this case, I decided to focus on my illustration background and my work, so I left out my other extracurricular interests and my other mediums.

A.K. “Ames” Cyrway (who) is a science-fiction illustrator (what), focusing on pen and ink, colored markers and pencils, and digital illustration (how). They are primarily self-taught, starting at a young age by copying from comics books before moving on to original characters and backgrounds (when). Throughout high school, Ames had taken private lessons with Margaret Stowers and into adulthood with Patricia Binette. Ames has had work published in Fun Productions’ Transformers Collector’s Club prose “Lively Pursuit” (where). Aside from art, Ames has over twenty years' experience in specialized custom picture framing, information technology, and graphic arts. They live in Waterville with their husband, Brian Vigue, also an accomplished artist (conclusion).

Once you finish your paragraph, read it aloud. This helps to find any issues with grammar or timing. Tweak it if necessary, revise, ask a friend or colleague to proof-read it for you. Does it sound like you? Does it feel organic and natural? 

For those sharp-eyed grammarians out there: I did leave out one question: "Why?" Why do you create art? This question will be addressed in the next blog post: Writing your Artist Statement.