Importance of Documenting Your Artwork

When it comes to archiving, photographs of your work are almost as important as the work itself. 

You don’t need to be a professional photographer or have a professional-grade camera to take high-quality photos. 

You’ll want to give a sense of your work as a whole and in detail with your photographs. You’ll want at least one image with all of the artwork in the shot. Photographing larger artworks is more difficult as you can’t easily just throw them up on a white wall, but there are tips and tricks to capture large-scale works. You might want to have details of your works documented. Take photos of up-close details, the work in sections, or of the frame. You can always delete extra images later. Don’t worry about taking too many images, it’s always beneficial to have options. 

Once you have your work photographed you’ll need a system in place to archive your works. While a spreadsheet is a sufficient way to get started, using an inventorying system allows you to include a more complete record of your artwork along with the high-resolution images. 

Don’t ignore the importance of proper provenance.

When writing yourself and your work into history it is critical that you record the provenance of your various works. 

Provenance is an artwork’s history of ownership and exhibit history. 

If you start to record your work’s provenance now, it is less likely that this information will be lost over time. Provenance matters to you and to collectors. Many artworks are physically lost, others we lose information about. Make sure to keep track of both the physical and the informational aspects of your works as they are essential to building your artistic legacy.

You can also assign works to locations such as galleries, exhibitions or storage and to keep track of where you sold work from and who you sold to. 

Connect your work to its context with your artist statement.

As much as you may want it to, your artwork doesn’t speak for itself. 

What makes some art within the art historical canon so interesting is that it is in response to the time it is coming from. Having an idea of not only what you are making, but why you are making it in the present will help other people contextualize your work in the future.

To build your history as an artist, you should keep track of your statements and descriptions for past works and shows. Have a decided place to upload these files.

Present yourself digitally all in one central place.

One reason that history-making is so challenging is that it is usually impossible to find all information in one place. Help people of the future avoid an art goose chase by organizing yourself now to provide all your information in one place. Consolidating and updating your digital presence is useful in the present for buyers and collectors to connect with you. A strong digital presence helps you to market yourself and your art. 

Make sure that your online presence works for you and that this information is easy to find.

Each different type of online presence shows different things about you as a person and as an artist. You may use Instagram to market yourself.

Write your own story with your artist bio.

Your bio gives you control over your own information and image.

With a well-crafted artist bio, you are able to present yourself now and in the future.

When creating your bio, think about your life as an artist as an elevator pitch. What are the important fact-building details that you leave out that you might want to have included? What are the essential details that you want to be in a print bio?  Good bios are concise, accurate, and detailed.