Penny Harris reveals her tips for improving your writing and communication skills, which will help you to reach new followers and, hopefully, collectors of your work.
Penny Harris
Parker Harris was created by Emma Parker and Penny Harris in 1990, and it is now one of the leading visual arts consultancies in the UK. Parker Harris manage some of the most important art prizes and exhibitions in the UK and mentor artists through all aspects of their careers.
To learn more about their professional development and online marketing coaching programmes, you can email [email protected]. You can also stay in touch with Parker Harris on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
At Parker Harris we meet artists on a daily basis – at galleries, in their studios and now, mostly online.
After the introductions, the conversation usually kicks off with ‘Tell me about your work’, which can produce extraordinary replies! Even the most articulate and accomplished artist, who has made perfect sense up until this moment, suddenly adopts a whole new language that results in a cryptic description that any man on the street, let alone an arts professional, would be hard-pushed to understand.
Talking about your work isn’t easy: most artists find it very difficult to write and speak about their practice. If you feel like it’s a challenge, be assured you are not alone! But to succeed in your career it is a skill that you should hone, so I hope these tips will help you along the way.
Communication is key
If you feel intimidated to talk about your work, remind yourself that people want to hear about it – there is an appetite to understand process, the source of materials and the underlying concept.
Being able to talk about your practice opens up a window to the work and, in some instances, can make it more accessible. We don’t advocate dumbing down your work or spoon-feeding viewers, but there is a degree of peripheral information around your practice that can really enhance the experience of looking at art.
Help your audiences to understand the underlying ideas. For instance, if you are a landscape painter, you should be able to explain briefly why you choose to work where you do and how you paint.
Believe me, viewers will be interested! And it will enable them to connect with the work, which is what you are ultimately trying to achieve.
Can I Touch Your Hair?, fineliner pen, (60x84cm) by Habib Hajallie (see case study below)
Hone your elevator pitch
On a basic level, being able to summarise your work for ‘elevator chat’ is really important.
This is a quick summary of your practice that should include simple facts: is your work large or small scale, is it figurative or abstract, does it have a theme, what are the materials you use and what inspires you?
It’s useful to put things in this order so that the person you are speaking to can envisage the work before you start talking about the more abstract concepts of your work.
As an arts professional, this quick summary of your practice will tell me everything I need to know – I will have a picture in mind of the sort of work and practice that you have.
Don’t be frightened of referencing other artists’ work if they are similar or if they help contextualise your practice.
Listen and learn
The best way is to read as much as you can of other artists, critics and collectors, via print and online resources, such as podcasts and blogs. Good reviews of exhibitions and artists will help you see how it’s done and the tone that you should adopt.
Another thing you can do is talk about your work to friends and family, then ask them to summarise what you said. You’ll soon find out whether someone understood you or not! Talking to other artists and arts professionals about your work is also a very good way of clarifying your ideas.
Adapt to your audience
Another consideration is the platform that you are writing for and each channel’s specific audience.
The text you use on your website is not going to be the same as the posts you write on Twitter or Instagram – think about who you are talking to and adjust the way in which you communicate with them to pitch at the right level.
Spending a bit of time really thinking about the individual audiences, how and why they are going to engage with you will help you write the appropriate text.
Get your applications in
Another situation in which you’ll need to explain your work and process is when applying for a commission, bursary or opportunity. This could be a key factor in the decision-making process and a well written proposal will always win out.
The common issue with the responses is always around clarity. Rather like the tip for summarising your work, think of this as a series of answers to the questions what, how and why. What you make, how you make it and why you make it should be answered in equal parts.
So often we see quantities of text declaring a ‘passion’ for something but the artist never actually says what it is they create and how they do it. Bear in mind that you are speaking to a more informed audience, so you can go into much greater detail.
Questions of Our day, ballpoint pen on collaged pages, (59x84cm) by Habib Hajallie
Penny’s top tips for honing your communication skills
- Give people an insight into the concept of your work but don’t overshare.
- Develop a clear, concise summary of your practice: what, how and why are the key points you need to answer in any introductory text or statement.
- Read as much as you can of critical reviews of work in arts publications and newspapers; listen to podcasts of artists and creatives talking about their work.
- Think about your audiences for each of the platforms.
- When writing an application, don’t forget to give a description of what you’re planning to create and what it’ll look like in practice.
Case study – Habib Hajallie
Habib Hajallie
Q. As a visual artist, it can be difficult to put your work into words – as opposed to images. Do you struggle with this too?
A. Earlier in my career, I didn’t like writing about my work. I would worry that my explanations may not be intellectual enough, or conversely, that they may seem pretentious.
I soon realised that when making my most impactful works I took risks with being vulnerable and potentially controversial; simply put, I removed the element of worrying about being good enough. I applied this perspective to how I speak and write about my work, I tried to write as clearly about my process as possible – remembering that writing something is better than nothing.
Q. The key is finding the balance between your work speaking for itself and describing it in a way that includes viewers and gives them an entry point into your art. How do you find this balance yourself?
A. In the traditional gallery setting, I believe that the artwork almost has to speak for itself. An online presentation is very different: just an image of an artwork on the screen, with little background, may not be enough to engage a viewer that has unlimited access to several other pieces, just a click away.
Viewers will immediately deduce a narrative apropos of the artwork before they even read about it. It is crucial to remember that for someone to want to read about your work in the first instance, they must already be interested to a certain extent.
When you recognise that writing about your work can be seen as a ‘bonus’ for people, this alleviates some of the pressure or anxiety that artists sometimes feel around articulating ideas behind a piece.
Most importantly, I try to write about each artwork as though the person reading it has never seen or heard of my work before.
The entire purpose of my work is to empower and celebrate people of colour through portraiture that is relevant in a socio-political context. So, I see writing about my work as an opportunity to reach more people. I want to make work that resonates with the people that my practice represents and for others to see a different perspective.
Writing about my work in my blog, on social media and in online galleries allows the work to be understood from the perspective of the practitioner, whilst enabling the viewer to maintain their own opinions but showing a point of comparison.
Q. Do you have some tips for artists about how to talk and write about their work?
A. The most important thing I can stress is to be concise. This is advice that I’ve repeatedly been told throughout my career regarding artist statements, blog posts, funding proposals, etc.
Whilst typing, constantly remind yourself why you’re writing, don’t worry about meeting a word count. Try to avoid clichés (I still struggle with this), it’s easy to fall into traps of romantic descriptions without any substance.
Lastly, read out loud what you’ve written; you may also find it helps to show it to someone else to see if you’ve made your point clear.
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