A search for insights into the creative processes utilized within the visual arts: shifting focus (1991-2006) : fifteen years of conflict and productivity in the artistic work of Noel Robbins

In an effort to enhance art education, and to garner a better understanding of the artistic individual, arts-based research emphasizing cognitive case studies, or process examination have been conducted; several should be noted for their contributions to this study. First, are the cognitive case studies conducted by Franklin (1989), Gardner (1997), and Gruber and Wallace (2001); second, are studies emphasizing artistic processes conducted by Beittel (1973), and Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi (1976). It is the author's contention that cognition, intuition, and sensory experience, contribute to the successful production of a work of art. A documented history of artsbased research has been conducted inside the classroom, therefore this dissertation focuses on the integration of cognitive, intuitive, and sensory aspects of the creative process utilized by an artist working in a natural setting. It is appropriate to characterize this research as a longitudinal study of the creative process utilized by the accomplished artist Noel Robbins. The author deems Robbins as "accomplished" having earned the highest academic degree, the Master of Fine Arts, and recognition from the artistic community at large. It is challenging for an individual that has been professionally trained as an artist to remain objective while conducting research within her respective discipline. Therefore, the author utilized a phenomenological approach incorporating data triangulation, along with peer and member checking. Robbins's artistic process was analyzed using the Evolving Systems Approach (ESA) developed by Gruber and his associates (2001), whereby purpose, affect, and knowledge were examined. Insights were sought concerning changes within Robbins's artwork over a 15-year period. Self-directed art production (Ulbricht, 2005, Wilson, 2005), termed by Wilson "the third pedagogical site" (p. 1), offers an alternative to the prescribed media/techniqueoriented artwork emphasized in the schools. This is consistent with Robbins's artistic process that the author analyzed. This author posits that it is only through continued micro-aesthetic investigations of artistic processes that art educators will be able to fully embrace Dewey's (1934) belief that the connection between art and its relationship to society and nature is not only an intellectual (conscious) bond, but also an intuitive and sensory connection as well.