Creativity in Action: Drawing and Cognition in Contemporary Artists' Practices

• In Event: Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: Arts, A/r/tography, and Identity

Abstract

Arts-based and cognitive-ethnographic methods were used to study the cognitive interactions underlying eight contemporary artists’ drawing practices. The study focused on open-ended, improvisational drawing, rather than the rendering of a predetermined image. Video recordings of artists drawing in their own studios, retrospective interviews and field notes provided the data. Drawing itself was used as a research tool, to analyze the data and visualize underlying concepts.

This study investigated drawing processes, rather than materials, form, content or end products. A descriptive model of improvisational drawing emerged, based on five fundamental drawing actions and common dialogic interactions found in the working methods of eight professional artists. Insight into the creative process emerged which might be extended to other forms of creative work.

Author

• Andrea Kantrowitz, Temple University