About This Resume

Most artists first write an exhibition record in art school, but some start out by copying a friend's layout the night before a residency deadline. Most open calls ask for one anyway. Galleries, residency panels and grant juries read these records in batches, so they expect a familiar order and scan for where you have shown, who has supported the work and what you are making now. Some calls ask for a one- or two-page artist resume and others for a full CV, and the resume is simply the selected version.

Jurors and gallery directors usually look first at exhibitions, split into solo and group shows, then at residencies, grants and awards, and after that at collections and press. Fit matters too. A panel wants to see venues and jurors that suit its own program, and steady recent activity counts for more than a long list that stopped years ago, especially in a residency application.

What to Include

  • Contact details and a website with your current portfolio
  • Education: degree, school and year, plus your thesis show if it is recent
  • Solo and group exhibitions in separate lists, newest first: year, title, venue and city
  • Residencies, fellowships, grants and awards, with years
  • Collections that hold your work (name private collectors only with their permission)
  • Bibliography: reviews, interviews and catalogs that discuss your work
  • Teaching, lectures and visiting artist talks, if you are applying for teaching work

Artist Resume Sample

Sample resume. The person, employers and contact details are fictional.

Ines Carvalho

Visual Artist, Printmaking and Painting
Providence, RI | ines.carvalho@example.com | (555) 013-2741

Summary

Printmaker and painter whose woodcuts and monotypes look at New England textile mills and the families who worked in them. Teaches printmaking part time and runs a community press night twice a month.

Experience

Adjunct Instructor, Printmaking, Narragansett School of Art, Providence, RI 2022 to present

  • Teach Relief Printmaking I and Introduction to Monotype to 14 to 18 students a semester.
  • Rewrote the print shop's safety and ink disposal procedures with the facilities manager.
  • Organized an end-of-semester print sale that raised $3,200 for student materials.

Studio Artist and Community Press Organizer, Fox Point Print Collective, Providence, RI 2019 to present

  • Run open press nights twice a month for 20 to 30 artists and neighbors.
  • Wrote and won two small grants for new rollers and a portable press for school visits.
  • Printed editions for 11 visiting artists and kept records of each edition, its paper and its numbering.

Education

Master of Fine Arts, Printmaking, Blackstone Valley University, 2019
Thesis exhibition: Bobbin and Loom

Bachelor of Fine Arts, Painting, Seekonk College of Art, 2015

Skills

Woodcut and linocut, Monotype, Screen printing, Oil painting, Edition printing and records, Press maintenance, Photographing artwork for applications, Grant writing

Solo Exhibitions

  • 2025, Shift Change, Harbor Street Gallery, New Bedford, MA
  • 2023, Bobbin Hands, Pawtuxet Project Space, Cranston, RI

Selected Group Exhibitions

  • 2026, Northeast Print Annual (juried), Salt Marsh Arts Center, Portsmouth, NH
  • 2024, Pressure: Five Printmakers (invitational), Cobbler Street Gallery, Worcester, MA
  • 2022, Small Works (juried), Lantern Hall, Pawtucket, RI

Residencies, Grants and Awards

  • 2025, Four-week residency, Wicklow Pond Arts Colony, Vermont
  • 2024, Project Grant, Ocean State Arts Fund
  • 2021, Emerging Printmaker Award, Atlantic Print Society

Collections

  • Blackstone Valley University Special Collections
  • Salt Marsh Arts Center print archive

Bibliography

  • Lindqvist, Mara. "Mill Towns in Ink." Coastline Arts Review, Spring 2025.

Tips for Your Artist Resume

  • When you settle on a format for exhibition lines, use it for every one. That is, if the first line reads year, title, venue and city, make sure the rest read the same way.
  • Lead with the section that matters most for the call. A residency application can open with residencies and grants, and a gallery submission can open with exhibitions.
  • If you are early in your career, include student shows, open studios, juried exhibitions and pop-up shows, and give each the same care as a museum show. A short list of real entries reads better than one padded with every event you attended.
  • Label group shows by type (juried, invitational, two-person) and name the juror when that name helps your case.
  • Leave out prices and sales. The resume records where your work has been seen and who has supported it, and sales talk belongs in a conversation with a gallery.
  • Cite reviews in a standard style, with author, title, publication and date, so a reader can find each one.
  • Keep a full CV on file and cut a selected resume from it for each call, above all when an application sets a page limit.

Next steps: the resume writing guide covers every section in detail, and the template library has layouts for other fields and career stages.