Thou Art, I Am: Discovery and Recovery in the Art-making Process

Abstract

This chapter explores the experience of making visual art and its interface with mental wellbeing. It draws on data from empirical narrative research with mentally ill artists (Sagan, 2014). Observant of the lived experience of participants and of the meanings made by them of their particular processes of making art, the research is couched within what is still known as the 'new paradigm' for psychology (Smith, Hare & Langenhove, 1995). This paradigm, borne of the well-founded worry that the application of psychology dehumanised people (Reason & Rowan, 1981) is one driven more to understanding and description than to measuring-and towards determining social rather than statistical significance. The messages of research within this paradigm are often side-lined, not considered as offering hard evidence. However, these messages provide important insights into the experience of being human and how that human makes sense of that experience as part of her very being.

Co-emergence: an art-full dance of inquiry into artists’ experiences of making art

“…The simultaneously personal and shared process of discovery and creation described by Small Acts performer-participants has been reported by numerous researchers and artists (see Burton 2017;Camic, Baker, and Tischler 2016;Cox, Brett-MacLean, and Courneya 2016;Perry 2011;Sagan 2017). The theme is consistent with insights from Burton (2017) that collaboratives bring strength in unity and greater potential for new ideas and solutions.…”

Creative Inquiry in Applied Linguistics: Language, Communication and the Arts

“…This creativity lies not only in the methods he uses (photography and digital archiving) but also in his epistemological approach to his work. His research focuses on the arts as objects of analysis but starts from an affective, experiential curiosity (see Sagan 2017) from which questions and concepts emerged rather than being articulated a priori (see Phipps 2013) and which is grounded in a desire to open up rather than pin down knowledge (Turvey & Walton 2017).…”