Useful Articles · For artists

Biography, “About” Text and Artist Statement: Three Ways to Present an Artist

Tatiana Knyazhitskaya · 2026

Imagine that Leonardo da Vinci has decided to build his own website. He has many works, even more interests, and no way of explaining who he is in a single phrase. An artist? But he also studies anatomy, designs machines, observes the movement of water and dreams up flying apparatus. How can he tell all this without turning the text into an endless inventory of works, manuscripts and projects?

For different purposes, Leonardo would need different texts.

Biography

A biography rests on facts and is usually written in the third person:

“Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452 near the town of Vinci. He worked in Florence, Milan, Rome and France. He produced paintings, pursued anatomical research, engineering projects and the study of nature.”

The guiding principle of a biography is to join dates, places, events, encounters and works into a continuous story. It answers the question: how did this person become the artist we know?

The “About” text

The “About” text on a website’s home page or in an exhibition catalogue is shorter and freer. Its job is to introduce the author quickly to a reader or a potential client. In Leonardo’s voice, such a text might read like this:

“I am Leonardo, artist and researcher. I am fascinated by how the world is made — from the expression of a human face to the movement of water and the flight of birds. In my work I bring together observation, experiment and imagination.”

There is no need for the whole life story here. What matters to the reader or client is to understand at once who this is, what they do and what sets them apart.

Artist statement

An artist statement is a text about the creative practice, and it speaks not so much of the artist’s personality as of the art itself. Its protagonist is the idea embodied in the works.

What might Leonardo have written in his artist statement?

“I do not separate art from knowledge. To paint a face, I study the movement of muscles; to render the billowing of cloth, the movement of air; to depict water, the laws of its flow. Painting allows me to explore light, space and human expression; drawing, to record observations swiftly and test ideas; and the technical drawing and the model, to turn a thought into a working construction. I choose my technique according to which secret of nature I wish to make visible.”

Such a text answers the questions: what does the artist investigate, why do they choose particular themes, materials and techniques, and how does their artistic method work?

One artist — three vantage points

In this way one artist becomes visible from different angles. The biography tells of the path. The “About” text introduces the person. The artist statement reveals the meaning and method of the work. These materials may draw on the same facts, but they should not repeat one another.

Sorting your own life and a multitude of works into these different formats on your own is no easy matter. Leonardo and today’s artists alike experience their life and their work as a single whole.

If you need a biography, a website text or an artist statement, I can help you prepare them as a unified system — without empty phrases or forced grandeur. Write to me.