You are, of course, free to leave your Artist Statement Text blank – if you want to greatly decrease the search engine appeal of your website!!
Since Google pulls a great deal of it's information about your site from the Home Page of your site, having a text-free home page is generally not a good idea. While OPP totally understands the idea of letting the art speak for itself, Google isn't so keen.
Leaving your Artist Statement blank may affect your ranking on search engines. If there is little or no content-rich text on your website, especially on your Home Page, your site may not be indexed well by Google.