I hopped on the Baker Artist Awards site again last night to take a look around. Many new artists have joined over the past month, and currently only 18 days remain for voting. The whole JPG Magazine debacle has kept me thinking about user-generated content and the widening pool of artists, especially digital artists and photographers.

While I love the Baker Awards overall, I noticed a lot of entries last night with no artist statement. I include in this category folks who wrote along the lines of “through my paintings I hope to capture everyday moments and the relationships between people and the space they inhabit.” Just as it disturbs me when I receive woefully inadequate resumes at the office, I am troubled when I see up-and-coming artists disregard one of the most basic expressions of professionalism in their craft.

The artist statement provides conceptual backing for a body of work. Ideally, the content and subject are articulated clearly to give the reader an accurate impression of the art even without actually seeing it. The artist statement also provides a forum to discuss metaphors, themes, and/or issues present in the work.

While visual art is about creativity and sometimes breaking the rules, galleries and juried competitions always ask for an artist statement. If there isn't enough content to craft an effective statement, the work just isn't ready for the professional arena. In an ever-expanding art world, these details gain greater importance, not less. Faced with a glut of images, jurors have an obligation to single out and reward artists whose work is well-considered and well-presented. Truly good art is a marriage of technical skill and great ideas, and anyone who has defended their images through a long critique knows it's about much more than being able to tack pretty pictures up on a wall.

It's a competitive world out there, and Baltimore's artists need to recognize the amount of foundation money at stake here. In a month or so, one of us will be awarded a $20,000 prize. With 496 entries so far, work that seems conceptually incomplete will be easy to weed out, and I foresee the winning art being both thought-provoking and well-executed.

Do you agree? What hallmarks of professionalism and care do you look for in visual art? Please add your thoughts in the comments.