Toward an Understanding of Creativity Through a Qualitative Appraisal of Contemporary Art Making

Research into creativity is influenced largely by where the determinants of creativity are considered to reside. Thus, research tends to target either qualities of the creative person, the creative product, the creative process, or the wider creative environment. The interactive and mutually dependent nature of these variables tends to be ignored, resulting in impoverished theories of creativity that are based on single levels of analysis. To address these concerns, a qualitative analysis of the activities of creatively active people (visual artists) was conducted in the belief that such an approach would illuminate the complex and diverse nature of creative activity through directly addressing the activities, beliefs, and perceptions of those people. This resulted in a descriptive analysis of the experiences of creative individuals and their interaction with their creative environment. A social constructionist paradigm was employed to explore the personal experience of creativity and its socially constru...