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Cape Town  /  Essays  /  Prompt 1

Cape Town: Statement of motivation (Fine Art)

250-500 words

A statement of motivation of 250-500 words, submitted digitally as part of the Michaelis School of Fine Art (BAFA) undergraduate application, alongside a portfolio of four set monochromatic drawings and up to ten further works.
What it’s really asking

Michaelis wants to know why you want to study fine art at this school specifically, what your current practice looks like, and how you think about making work. It sits next to your portfolio, so it is read as the voice behind the images, not as a standalone essay.

Why they ask it

Fine art selection is not purely numerical, so the statement and portfolio together carry real weight. Readers use the statement to gauge seriousness, self-awareness and fit with a demanding studio degree. A vague statement undermines even a strong portfolio.

Three ways in
Anchor in one work

Describe one work in your portfolio and the specific problem you were trying to solve in it, so the statement reads as the voice behind the images.

Name your recurring question

Point to a medium, theme or question your practice keeps returning to, and explain why it pulls at you.

Connect to Michaelis

Reference something specific about the school (its studio model, a course, a body of work by staff or alumni) that you want to learn from.

✕  Weak opening

“Ever since I was a child, I have loved art and known that I was born to be an artist.”

✓  Strong opening

“I keep drawing the same stairwell in my building, once a week for a year, because I still cannot make the light on the third step look the way it falls.”

✦ Annotated example · The reservoir at Theewaterskloof. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →
I began drawing the dam at Theewaterskloof in 2018, the year it nearly emptied. My aunt farms apples on its eastern bank, and during the drought I spent the holidays there filling a sketchbook with the cracked floor where water used to be. 1What held me was not the disaster but the texture: the way drought turned mud into a grid of grey plates, each one a different value of the same colour. I had no language for it then, only charcoal. 2I want to study at Michaelis because the monochromatic drawing requirement is exactly the constraint I have been circling on my own. Working without colour forced me to learn that a drawing is built from pressure and patience, not from invention. 3When I tried to render the reservoir water returning in 2021, I failed for months. My darks went flat and my mid-tones turned to mud. I learned to leave the paper bare where the light was, to subtract rather than add. 4Three of the works in my portfolio come from that series, drawn at different stages of the dam refilling. I am submitting them not because they are resolved, but because I can tell you precisely what each one is trying and failing to do. 5Beyond the set pieces I have included a charcoal study of my aunt's hands sorting fruit, and a series of small graphite drawings of irrigation pipes, because I am drawn to objects that carry the evidence of use. 6I do not yet know whether my future is in drawing, printmaking, or something I have not met. What I do know is that I think most clearly with a stick of charcoal in my hand, and that I want three years among people who will tell me, honestly, where my work is weak. I am ready to be taught.7
  1. 1Opens with a concrete place, date, and personal tie. UCT wants evidence and specificity, not a generic love-of-art preamble, and this grounds the motivation in lived observation.
  2. 2Names a formal, visual problem (value within a single colour) directly relevant to the four set monochromatic drawings. It shows the applicant already thinks in the terms the portfolio tests.
  3. 3Connects the school's specific entry requirement to the applicant's existing practice. This is the 'specific motivation for this exact programme' that the rubric rewards, not flattery about reputation.
  4. 4Honest account of failure and the technical lesson it taught. Self-knowledge and craft over polish is what an art school reads for; admitting a struggle is more credible than claiming mastery.
  5. 5Directly references the portfolio and frames it with critical distance. Treating one's own work as a set of experiments, with articulated intentions, signals readiness for studio critique.
  6. 6Extends the body of work coherently rather than scattering subjects. It demonstrates a sustained visual preoccupation, which admissions tutors trust more than range for its own sake.
  7. 7Closes with measured ambition and an explicit appetite for criticism. Ending on a desire to learn, rather than a grand artistic mission statement, matches UCT's preference for honest self-knowledge over a polished life story.
Stuck? Start here
  • Which three works in my portfolio best show how I actually think, and what was I solving in each?
  • What question or material does my work keep coming back to, even when I do not plan it?
  • What can Michaelis give me that I cannot get on my own right now?
Before you submit
  • Roughly four-fifths is about my practice and the programme, not my biography
  • I reference at least one specific work and one specific thing about Michaelis
  • I am comfortably inside 500 words with no decorative filler

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