SP w6 Artist statement

During the 1:1 last week Clare and I made a to do en to go list. One of the things she asked me to do was to make an artist statement.

I have never made an artist statement and I really had no idea where to start. I didn't even know what it should contain. So I started looking for what others have and I visited a number of sites that lead through the process step by step.

I soon realized that you first of all need to know what you want to say and that it must be done briefly and forcefully.

That was the moment that I thought back to a lecture by Lindsay Adler, a commercial photographer whom I admire for her use of light and the graphic quality of the images.

https://www.lindsayadlerphotography.com/index

She said that, years before, she was sent away from a magazine because she first had to develop a style. I see overlaps with her search for what style is and how you can define it for yourself. The good news was that she had also found an answer. She said you only needed 3 to 5 words to describe your style. For herself, those were the words Fashion, bold and graphic. As long as her photos meet those 3 criteria, it fits within her style.

The 3 to 5 words are answers to essential questions such as: 1. What kind of photos do you take. 2. What makes those photos recognizable 3. What do you want the viewer to feel, think when she looks at your images? 4. What characterizes the photos? 5. Where do you take the photos?

So I thought when I start answering those questions I have words that can come back in my statement. I ended up with 3 column of 4 words/ small small sentences

Based on this I wrote a first statment that I discussed with Clare. She said that I also had to add the current project with the clouds, which I also did, so I now have a first sketch artist statement.

Hilde Maassen, artist statement

When I was ten I knew for sure; I wanted to go to the art academy later. During the first two years at the academy for industrial design, who were mainly devoted to experimenting and working with different materials such as plastic, wood, metal, textile and paper, I discovered my medium; photography.

The semi-automatic process on which you can influence yourself gives an endless series of possibilities to record daily reality and then adjust, transform or manipulate it. I embrace both the analog and digital process that can be combined playfully.

The love for different materials and experiments often help me to come to new ideas. I create circumstances in which coincidence and happy incidents can occur. Often I have the idea that I create the conditions for the images to naturally arise. I do not always know what the end result will be and that surprise keeps it exciting and lively.

The subjects in my images may vary, but I am always looking for a certain transformation or alienation. Often with a little exaggeration. The image itself must evoke a feeling in the viewer of surprise, wonder and sometimes even disturbance.

Project: “Dutch mountains.” (clouds)

This series of photos are all generated from clouds. Clouds are very important in the process of cooling the earth on the one hand and they can partially absorb greenhouse gases on the other hand. However, since the industrial revolution, clouds have no longer been purely natural. They can be "made" by people.

Climate changes and human interference have major consequences for the clouds.  One example is that they move towards the poles and are less effective in the functions mentioned. Ever since the 1930s, the wether and clouds has been locally influenced by, most local, authorities and scientists are now investigating whether they can make clouds themselves.

In this series of photos, I want you to look up at the sky to raise awareness of a not so well-known phenomenon in the climate debate. We are all familiar with looking for figures in clouds and recognizing shapes, but what is going on in these images where the clouds get a mass and threaten to thunder down like pebbles? Not exactly the kind of poetry that people normally connect to this celestial phenomenon.

I am very happy with this, know that it need some redaction, but I really feel that this can facilitate communication with galleries, museums and magazines. Although Clare also admitted that she knows several big names in the art world who, when she asked for their statement, confessed she had never made one.