5+ Best Artist Interview Questions & Answers

We’ve compiled the best artist interview questions and answers for your upcoming interview. Being a professional artist is still in view for many people. While you might not hear about how many artists are making it mainstream, there are still many jobs that you can do in the art industry. For example, you could work with a collector. You could work with an arts' journalist. Or you could work with a gallery. All of these things are professional jobs that will put your art history and your knowledge or skill set of art to work.

Preparing for an artist interview is not unlike most interviews. You want to be sure that you have a firm knowledge of the company you are applying to, and be sure you ask as many qualifying questions regarding the position as possible. From there, you’ll be able to more accurately discuss what role you might be able to have with the company in an active interview.

Artist Interview Questions & Answers

1. What does art mean to you?

Art is a form of expression. It allows the human mind and heart to express something that maybe words cannot. Sometimes they are words. But in many forms, they’re time capsules of a given period in that person's life and moment. Capturing that moment, that emotion, that feeling, is art.

2. What’s the most valuable piece of art to you?

For me it would be Monet’s work. Or maybe the Mona Lisa. Because its become nearly impossible for modern artists to reproduce it. That means its value is beyond human understanding. And that’s quite cool to me as an individual.

3. What is impressionism?

Impressionism is a style or movement in painting that was originally transformed or transpired in France in the early 1860s. It can be characters by a visual impression of the moment, in terms of the lighting effects and the colorization that it has within the piece itself.

4. What type of art is Banksy?

Banksy would be classified as street art. But it is becoming more commercialized and as his work begins to hit auction houses, it is transforming our understanding of what once was street art and how we handle and treat it.

5. How do you handle classifying and categorizing artwork?

With as much metadata and descriptions as possible. A heavy archive should be built around the artist, the time period, the color, the style, and as much as we can physically gather about the piece itself.

6. What are some ways you’d work with artists?

Working with artists should be an ongoing thing whenever you are involved in the art industry. Generally speaking, most artists struggle to find a community platform to showcase their work. And doing this is quite easy with available commercial spaces and now, social media, which helps us spread the word. This is an easy way to interact and grow out the community of artists.

7. Why do you think the youth is so attracted to art?

Because as life begins to transform into something more complex every day, the youth feel it the most. They are most vulnerable to emotions and day-to-day life that is brand new to them. So they are turning to express themselves through many forms. Some of those forms would even be digital media, like video.