Plain English Is a Creative Superpower: Fixing the Artist Statement Without the Jargon

I read artist statements for fun. Not because I am noble. Because they are often hilarious. A recent one began: My practice interrogates the liminal space between domesticity and memory. I closed the tab. Not because it was too deep. Because I had no idea what the person made.

That is the problem. Somewhere along the way, the artist statement stopped being an invitation and became a password. If you can decode the jargon, you are in. If you cannot, you are out. And most people — including curators, editors, and potential collaborators — do not have the patience to decode.

The jargon problem is a trust problem

When every sentence is abstract, the reader assumes you are hiding. Maybe you are not. Maybe you are just nervous. But the effect is the same: the work has to fight through a fog to be seen. Art already asks for attention. Do not make people work to understand why they should give it.

Plain language is not simple-minded. It is clear. It is confident. It says: I know what I made, and I can tell you why without borrowing a vocabulary from a graduate seminar.

Why we write like that

We write like that because we have been trained to. MFA voice is real. Grant applications reward certain phrases. We think big words signal seriousness. We think specificity might make us sound small. So we reach for words like interrogates, liminal, praxis, juxtaposes, and unpack. We say the work explores themes of identity instead of saying what it actually shows.

But specificity is what makes a statement memorable. A vague statement can describe anyone. A specific one can only describe you.

Exercise 1: The kitchen-table sentence

Imagine explaining your work to a friend at your kitchen table. Not a curator. Not a grant panel. A friend who likes you but does not know art-world vocabulary. Write one sentence: I make ___ because ___. No words that belong in a syllabus.

Not: I explore themes of memory and loss through mixed-media assemblage.

Try: I make small sculptures from things my family kept but never used — wedding china, hotel soaps, my grandfather's receipts. I am interested in what we save and what we are actually saving it for.

That second sentence is not less complex. It is more specific. The complexity is in the objects, not in the adjectives.

Exercise 2: The because ladder

Take your sentence and ask why three times. Each answer should get more concrete.

I make work about memory. Why? Because I am interested in what families keep. Why? Because my grandmother kept every receipt from the grocery store and labeled them in a shoebox. Why? Because she grew up without much and saving proof of ordinary life felt like a kind of safety.

Now you have a statement. Not a theme. A reason.

Before and after

Before: Through an interdisciplinary praxis, my work interrogates the liminal boundaries of domesticity and memory.

After: I make small sculptures from everyday objects my family saved but never used. I am interested in the gap between what we keep and what we actually need.

The after version is shorter, clearer, and harder to forget. It also gives the reader something to picture. That is not a small thing.

The bio is not the statement

The statement answers what and why. The bio answers who and what you have done. Do not blend them into a single fog of credentials and feelings. Keep the statement in first person. Keep the bio in third person and make it short. A bio is a handshake. A statement is a conversation.

Keep a list of banned words

Interrogates. Liminal. Praxis. Juxtaposes. Explores themes. Unpacks. Tension. Dialogue. Space between. Use them only if you mean them literally. Otherwise, replace them with verbs. What does the work actually do? Does it hide? Does it repeat? Does it stack? Does it interrupt? Specific verbs are your friends.

Read it out loud

If you stumble, rewrite. If it sounds like a grant application, rewrite. If your friend says oh, I get it, you are close. If your friend says that sounds impressive, you are not done. Impressive is not the goal. Understood is the goal.

Plain language is not anti-intellectual

You can be complex and clear. The complexity can live in the work. The statement's job is to open the door, not to prove you belong inside. Some of the smartest artists I know write the simplest statements. They are not dumbing anything down. They are respecting the reader.

Your statement does not need to impress a committee. It needs to make one person want to stay. Write like you talk. Then clean it up. That is the whole trick.