Introductions

I hope that this helps you with your writing. This is a really short explanation of what your introduction should consist of. We can talk about this more later if you think that it would help you out.

How to frame a problem:

Think of your introduction as something to motivate your reader to want to look at your artwork and to read the rest of your artist statement. This not only goes for artist statement, but for other papers that you’ll need to write in your life. Your introduction should establish a problem and should have four parts: a) stasis; b) destabilizer; c) consequences; and d) stability.

Stasis
This should be something that everyone agrees on because you need to draw your reader in. Stasis doesn’t imply background information. For our purposes, stasis and background information are opposites. Background information is something you give readers so that they can build on it. To be effective, it has to stay stable.

On the other hand, stasis is ironic. It works as motivation to readers to read your statement/paper or to look at your work only if readers come to see that what they thought was stable is NOT stable. This statement is the basis for instability, tension, or uncertainty in your statement.

For example: You could state what your ethical dilemma you’re grasping with is here.

Destabilizer

In this section you need to motivate your reader to care about problems that the readers didn’t even know existed. That’s why you need to destabilize your stasis statement. Here, you identify some idea that the readers get stability from. You then de-stabilize the idea and create the sense that something is wrong. In effect, you create a deeper problem: their deeper problem is that they didn’t even understand a that they had a problem.

For example: Why is the ethnical dilemma you’re grappling with a problem?

Consequences
This explains why it’s important that you look at this problem. This is the cost of leaving whatever you made unstable in your destabilizing statement. What are the consequences of keeping your destabilizing statement unstable? What are the benefits of your work?

For example: Why is it so important that your statement/artwork deals with this problem? What are the consequences of not examining this problem.

Stability
This is your thesis. This should tell the reader how your work addresses the specific problem that you have created.

For example: How does your work grapple with this dilemma? What is your argument or stance on this issue?

After your introduction you can start to provide explanations about your work, your choices, and background to your dilemma.