Do we even need artist statements?

Lately, I’ve been circling around the idea of the artist statement. Why is it so hard for me to write one? Maybe because for many artists, it wasn’t a single polished paragraph—it was their body of work, their philosophy, and their life that spoke.

Take Michelangelo: he never left a tidy “artist statement,” but through quotes like “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free,” he revealed his belief that art was a spiritual act of uncovering what was already there. I admire that sense of divine connection—of being a vessel for something larger than yourself.

My favorite Polish painter, Józef Chełmoński, also didn’t leave behind a formal, documented artist statement in the modern sense. I cherish his work for a deep sense of observation and a belief in the spiritual and emotional power of nature, which he saw as a source of healing and truth. The snow in his landscapes brings me back to childhood vacations in Białowieża and its misty mornings, to rabbits in Opole, to warm eggs carried in from my grandmother’s chicken coop.

Polish folk art, too—wycinanki with their symmetry and floral motifs, or the bold contrasts of Polish poster art—resonate with me. There’s something raw and striking about these traditions that I want to explore further.

From Monet, I value the way he let light and nature speak, rather than getting lost in detail. From Matisse, the freedom from line, the joy of color and organic shape—an echo of wycinanki again. Nigel Peake’s humility, quiet observation, and the clarity of his line, David Hockney’s curiosity and vividness of colors, Joan Mitchell’s courage to give space to raw feeling, Stanley Whitney’s playful spontaneity with color, Rothko’s depth of emotion through simplicity, Gerhard Richter’s tension between control and randomness plus his original painting method—they all give me fragments of what I seek.

And maybe that’s the point. My own “statement” will reveal itself organically over time, through the work itself. For now, what matters is observing, creating, and allowing images and colors to come into being—as if they already exist somewhere, and I am simply helping them cross into this world.

Perhaps the truest artist statement is not written, but lived.