Sharing your story

One of the regular concerns brought up by some of the artists I am mentoring at the moment is how to tell your story as an artist. How do you share just enough about yourself and your practice to build a bond with your clients and audiences? This bond is important. It has the potential to translate to sales.

Some people have no problems putting their story into words. But this wordsmithing skill is not something we are all blessed with. Visual artists are used to telling stories through their work, but not necessarily in writing.

What is a good starting point?

Think about WHAT inspires you? Go deep into that.

You might say that you are inspired by the people and places about you. But why?

Dig deeper.

Write about that WHY.

Why am I creating a series of works based on the She Oak tree? It is because of my childhood experiences of camping at the beach with my family as a child - the She Oak pods stabbing me in the feet, pulling apart the needles to make little "pencils", extracting the seeds from the pods so obsessively it took weeks for mum fingernails to go back to normal and climbing the trees that reached out over the dunes.

Share something engaging, interesting and relatable.

HOW can you share that story?

Find historical photographs and build a story over a couple of weeks that shares that journey on social media.

This is great content for your BLOGS, Facebook and Instagram.

Try writing a few of these stories and see what binds them together. Find your overarching story as an artist that draws threads between these and gives people an insight into your practice on your website and the "About" sections of your social media sites.

The wonderful Katie Whyte will be running a webinar on this in October. So stay tuned to The Ideas Distillery and CQ Shopfront social media sites for details.