Artist Bio Template

A 150-word artist bio template for galleries, portfolios, residency applications, and press one-sheets.

When to use this template

• Gallery and exhibition pages
• Portfolio and personal website About sections
• Residency and grant applications
• Press kits for openings
• Catalog and program notes

The template

[NAME] is a [MEDIUM] working in [MATERIALS OR FORMAT]. [Her/His/Their] work returns repeatedly to [SPECIFIC SUBJECT] and [SPECIFIC APPROACH OR ANGLE]. [Her/His/Their] work has been shown at [TWO TO THREE NAMED VENUES] and is held in [COLLECTION, IF APPLICABLE]. [She/He/They] [was/were] a [RESIDENCY OR FELLOWSHIP], and holds [DEGREE] from [SCHOOL, IF NAME-RECOGNIZED]. [She/He/They] lives in [PLACE], where [she/he/they] is at work on [CURRENT PROJECT].

A filled example

Sarah Mendel is a painter working in oil and gouache on linen. Her work returns repeatedly to abandoned 20th-century interiors — empty schools, closed department stores, vacant churches — and the way light continues to occupy rooms long after the people who built them have left. Her work has been shown at the Hauser Gallery in New York, the Calumet Project in Chicago, and is held in the permanent collection of the Albright-Knox. She was a 2024 MacDowell Fellow and holds an MFA from the Yale School of Art. She lives in the Hudson Valley, where she is at work on a series of paintings about the closed schoolhouses of upstate New York.

That's 122 words.

How to write the "subject" sentence

The hardest sentence in any artist bio. Two rules:

1. Name the subject concretely. Not "themes of memory" but "abandoned 20th-century interiors."
2. Name the approach. Not "explores" but "returns repeatedly to" — or "documents," or "stages," or "isolates."

If you can't name a concrete subject, the work might not yet have one. That's a useful diagnostic; consider drafting a longer artist statement first and pulling the cleanest single sentence into the bio.

Common mistakes

1. Adjectives in place of subjects. "Explores themes of memory, place, and the human condition" reads as invisible. Replace with the concrete subject.
2. Naming every venue. Pick two or three. The rest go on the CV.
3. Including every degree. MFA from an institution strangers recognize is worth including; a long list of certificates and workshops is not.
4. Forgetting the current project. The closing line — what you're currently making — is what makes the bio feel alive.

Or auto-fill it

Biography.co's Artist Bio Generator writes in this quiet, literary register, using your medium, subject, named venues, residencies, education, and current project.